Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find money cannot be eaten.~ Cree Prophecy

My intention is to invite you, with an open heart, into the world of the indigenous people, healers, medicine men and women, shamans and elders of the land, so that you may follow their teaching traditions throughout the native Amazonian communities, because they believe, that storytelling is the oldest art.

Let me begin my story with the trip over this great world of ours, our planet of treasures. Let me take you on an unusual trip with me, deep in Rainforest like I described in my book “ Transformation and Healing by Ayahuasca Spirit in the Amazonian Rainforest ”where at times people live in such a harsh land, are even more devoted to their homeland than most.

You are about to begin an adventure to a land. The traveling story of these people has at its centre, the story of the brave men and women, a forgotten history, teachers of living with a flame of magic, which are both the heart and mind and the song of the Earth, and the Star Fire, and the Blue Eternal Sky.

This journey will take you to a peaceful and dynamic place. It is where Mother Earth and the universe live with the known and unknown. The love, peace and serenity and all that exists on our planet, both positive and negative is there. We will journey to one of the many wondrous places in Amazon, where the surrounding scenery is full of wildlife, beauty, and magic.

The landscape is saturated with nomad’s memories, and stories told over the centuries. For thousands of years native people over the world have told stories about the power of revered landscapes and spiritual directions of mysterious places. The sacred places of the land include cliffs, rivers, hills and mountains, where their meanings are also preserved in the narratives and memories. Amazon from Peru to Brazil is a land of myth and magic, microcosm of the timeless and blessedness.

Plants and trees have always been considered sacred as they are home to certain spirits. There is no Earth without the spirit. The worship of earth, sky and water is still practiced in Amazonian region. The extended family is seen as nature. The knowledge of the landscape is used to confront, understand and challenge the turbulent changes, which are taking place in the sacred places where people are seeking answers and solutions to their problems.

The tribes of the Brazilian Amazon also live in varied environments. Some of the tribes exist in the grassland, some in the tropical rainforest, and some in semi-desert regions. For all indigenous people land is a condition for life.

Tucano (Tukano) Indiansand many others tribes are very involved in their self-determination, defense of their territory, and autonomy. They live at different areas like

They are dominated by various religious mission groups bent on total acculturation for the Tucano.

The map shows the great diversity of individual languages in the Amazon and Orinoco Basins.

(Athena Review, after Mason 1950, and SIL Ethnologic 1996)

BRAZIL AND PERU

Tucano ethnic groups in the Uaupés basin . The following table presents population estimates for each ethnic group. The Uaupés River runs about 1,375 kilometers in length. From its mouth on the Rio Negro to its confluence with the Papuri River, the Uaupés is located in Brazilian territory and runs over about 342 kilometers.

Arapaso. Eastern Tukanian group who presently only speak the Tukano language. They live on the Middle Uaupés, below Iauareté, in villages such as Loiro, Paraná Jucá and São Francisco. Several families also live on the Rio Negro and in São Gabriel. Bará.The call themselves Waípinõmakã. They inhabit mainly the area of the headwaters of the Tiquié River, above the village of Trinidad, which is in Colombia; the upper Inambú stream (tributary of the Papuri) and the upper Colorado and Lobo (tributaries of the Pira-Paraná). They are divided into around eight sibs . They are specialists in the preparation of aturá carrying baskets made of turi, much used where the Maku carrying baskets made of vines are not available. They also prepare red dye, carajuru. Barasana.They call themselves Hanera. They live on the Tatu, Komeya, Colorado and Lobo streams, tributaries of the Pira-Paraná, and on the Pira-Paraná itself, in Colombian territory. They are also found dispersed in the Uaupés basin, in Brazil. Desana.They call themselves Umukomasã. They live mainly on the Tiquié River and its tributaries, the Cucura, Umari and Castanha; the Papuri River (especially in Piracuara and Monfort) and its tributaries, the Turi and Urucu; besides parts of the Uaupés and Negro rivers.Karapanã.They call themselves the Muteamasa, Ukopinõpõna. They live on the Tí stream (tributary of the upper Vaupés) and upper Papuri, in Colombia. In Brazil, they are found dispersed in several villages of the Tiquié and Negro. Kubeo.They call thermselves Kubéwa or Pamíwa. They speak a very distinct language of the Eastern Tukanian family, and for this reason are sometimes classified as Central Tukanian. The vast majority of them live in Colombian territory, in the region of the upper Uaupés, including its tributaries the Querari, Cuduiari and Pirabatón. In Brazil, they live in three villages on the upper Uaupés and are found in small numbers on the upper Aiari. Makuna.They call themselves Yeba-masã. They live mainly in the neighboring territory of Colombia, especially on the Caño Komeya, tributary of the Pira-Paraná River, on the lower course of this river, and on the lower Apapóris. In Brazil, they are found on the upper Tiquié and on its tributaries, the Castanha and Onça streams. They specialize in the manufacture of blowguns and curare poison, they are also skilled manufacturers of canoes. Miriti-tapuya or Buia-tapuya.Presently, they only speak the Tukano language. They have traditionally inhabited the lower and middle Tiquié, especially in the communities of Iraiti, São Tomé, Vila Nova and Micura. Pira-tapuya. They call themselves Waíkana. They are located on the middle Papuri (around Teresita) and on the lower Uaupés. They have migrated and also live in places on the Rio Negro and in São Gabriel. Siriano.They call themselves Siria-masã. They live on the Caño Paca and Caño Viña, tributaries of the upper Papuri, in Colombian territory. In Brazil, they are found dispersed throughout the Uaupés and Rio Negro river basins. Taiwano, Eduria or Erulia. They call themselves Ukohinomasã. They live on the Caño Piedra and Tatu, tributaries of the Pira-Paraná River, and the Cananari River, tributary of the Apapóris. All of these areas are situated in Colombian territory. There exists information that the group has eight subdivisions. Tariana.They call themselves Taliaseri. Diferent from the other ethnic groups of the Uaupés basin, most of the Tariana have adopted Eastern Tukano, but they used to speak a language belonging to the Arawak family, and several communities still speak this Arawakan language. Presently, they live on the middle Uaupés, lower Papuri and upper Iauiari. Their population center lies between the Iauareté and Periquito rapids. They are specialists in fishing tools such as the caiá, cacuri (fish trap), matapi. Tatuyo.They call themselves Umerekopinõ. They live in an area located in Colombia: the upper Pira-Paraná River, the upper Tí and the Caño Japu. Tukano.They call themselves Ye"pâ-masa or Daséa. This is the most numerous group of the Eastern Tukanoan language family. They are concentrated primarily on the Tiquié, Papuri and Uaupés rivers; but they are also living on the Rio Negro, below the mouth of the Uaupés, and also in the city of São Gabriel. Tuyuka.They call themselves Dokapuara or Utapinõmakãphõná. They are concentrated mainly on the upper Tiquié River, between Caruru Rapids and Colombian village of Trinidad, including the Onça, Cabari and Abiyú streams. They are also found on parts of the Papuri River near the Brazil/Colombia border and on its tributary the Inambú. Kotiria.They call themselves Kótiria. They are located predominantly on the middle Uaupés, between Arara and Mitú falls. Between Arara and Taracuá (of the upper Uaupés), the Kotiria are the only group; above that point, they live together in a territory where the Kubeo are the majority. Yuruti.They call themselves Yutabopinõ. A group of the Eastern Tukanian language family, they live on the upper Paca (tributary of the upper Papuri) and the caños Yi and Tui and neighboring areas of the Vaupés into which these streams flow (in Colombian territory).

Each group has their own origin stories but they also share a body of broadly identical mythology. The key origin myth explains how an Anaconda-ancestor entered the world-house through the "water-door" in the East and travelled up the Río Negro and Uaupés with the ancestors of all humanity inside his body. Initially in the form of feather ornaments, these spirit-ancestors were transformed into human beings over the course of their journey. When they reached the rapids of Ipanoré, the centre of the world, they emerged from a hole in the rocks and moved to their respective territories.The world is made up of three basic levels sky, earth, and loverworld. The man marries the star-woman and goes with her to visit her family. To the man, the stars are spirits of the dead who live by night. All groups have Anaconda-ancestors. If the maloca is the world so also is it a body. The thatched roof is the sky, the supporting house posts are mountains, the walls are the chains of hills, that seem to surround the visible landscape, at the world's edge and beneath the floor runs the River of the Dead. The maloca has two doors, a men's door or "water door" in the East and a woman's door in the West, with a long ridge pole, "the path of the Sun", running along the top of the house between the two equatorial region, the earthly rivers flow from East to West, or from women's door to men's door; to complete a closed circuit of water, the River of the Dead flows from East to West. The children are the replication of the original ancestors.The maloca's painted front is a man's face, the men's door is his mouth, the ridgepole and lateral spars are his spine and ribs, the centre of the house is his heart, and the rear, women's door is his anus. Seen from the women's end and from their perspective, the spine, ribs and heart remain constant but the rest of the body is reversed: the women's door is her mouth, the men's door is her vagina and the interior of the house is her womb. Digestion, transformation and death all involve a passive flow from high to low, from upstream to downstream, from West to East. Life itself is a movement, sometimes a struggle. The Sun or Yeba Hakü , the "Father of the Universe", the source of light and life, moves constantly against the current, up the rivers of the earth from East to West by day and up the underworld river by night to appear again in the East. The Anaconda-ancestor who brought humanity to the world also travelled Sun-like from East towards the West, stopping when he reached the middle of the world.

The story of the Anaconda ancestor is a sacred narrative of primordial origins - and probably also a story of the Tukano" historical migrations. It can also be understood as a story about ecology, about the annual upriver migrations of Amazonian fish that come to spawn in headwater regions, and one about human reproduction. Human reproduction also involves an upward, "East -West" penetration of a "water door", an upward flow of semen, and a passage from the watery world of the womb to the dry terrestrial plane of human existence. No wonder then that "to be born" is hoe-hea, "to cross to a higher level".

But birth also involves a movement down the birth canal - cosmologically a movement from West to East and, in social terms, a movement from mother to father or from women to men. To understand this we must begin with death. Some Uaupés Indians, the Cubeo in particular, stage elaborate mourning rites with dancers in painted bark-cloth masks become fish, animals and other forest beings who welcome the dead soul to their spirit world. But Tukano burial itself is a simple affair: the grave is the maloca floor and the coffin a canoe cut in half.

Tukano share a notion of reincarnation- at death, an aspect of the dead person's soul returns to the "house of transformation", the group's origin site, a notion of reincarnation shared by all Tukano. Later the soul returns to the world of the living to be joined to the body of a new-born baby when the baby receives its name. People are named after a recently dead relative on the father's side, a father's father for a boy or a father's mother for a girl. Each group owns a limited set of personal names which are kept alive by being transmitted back to the living. The visible aspects of these name-souls are the feather headdresses worn by dancers, ornaments that are also buried with the dead. The underworld river is described as being awash with ornaments in the origin story, the spirits inside the Anaconda-canoe travelled in the form of dance- ornaments.

Buried in canoes, the souls of the dead, fall to the underworld river below. From there they drift downstream to the West and to the upstream regions of the world above. Women give birth, not in the maloca, but in a roça located inland, upstream and behind the house - also the West. The new-born baby is first bathed in the river then brought into the maloca through the rear, women's door. Confined inside the house for about a week with its mother and father, it is then again bathed in the river and given a name. Thus, in cosmological terms, babies do indeed come from women, water, the river, and the West.

Tukano believe in the vision of the Ayahuasca vine. If woman notice that she is pregnant, she is explaining situation like this: The Sun-father made her pregnant through her eye. She gave birth to a child that became the Caapi, -plant. The child was born during a flash of light. The woman - Yajé - cut the umbilical cord and rubbed the child with magic plants and shaped the body. The caapi-child grew till it was an old man constantly busy defending his hallucinogenic powers.

Brazil's tribal peoples live in a wide range of environments – tropical forests, grassland, scrub forest and semi-desert – and have a wide range of ways of life. Most tribes live by a mixture of hunting, gathering, and growing plants for food, medicine and to make everyday objects. Probably only the un-contacted Awá and Maku are completely nomadic, living entirely by hunting and gathering in the Amazon.

The most important thing for tribal peoples in Brazil is control over their lands – Brazil is one of only two South American countries that does not recognize tribal land ownership.

TheAwá are often called Brazil's last truly nomadic tribe. They call themselves-literally means people; hunter -gathered people.Their home is in the devastated forests of the eastern Amazon. They are living in bands of no more than 20-30 people. As they travel, they keep the embers of their fires lit, relighting the fire as they arrive in each place.

There are an ancient indigenous people that inhabit the basically two regions 1. Brazil Amazon- Guaja people and 2. Colombia- Ecuador border- Kwaiker people.

Awa- Kwaiker people speak a language called Awapit. They could manage the forest and the own lands, but unfortunately logging and mining interest are active in the reserve. They farm livestock, such as chickens, guinea pigs, ducks and they also grow papaya, avocado, hot peppers, mango and much more. Hunting is regulated.

Awa

Awa- Guaja people originally living in settlements and they adopted a nomadic lifestyle, living entirely off their forest. Their language is Tupi-Guarani family.

The Guaraniare a part of the Tupi group of peoples in South America. There are many different groups, even within each of the countries where they live. There are around 40,000 Guarani in Paraguay, where Guarani is an official language along with Spanish. In Brazil, there are around 30,000 Guarani, making them the country's most numerous tribe. Other Guarani live in neighboring Bolivia and Argentina. The Guarani are a deeply spiritual people.The are best known for their connection to the early Jesuit missions. Although there are different sub-groups of the tribe, all share a religion which emphasis land above all. . Land is the origin of all life, and is the gift of the 'great father', Ñande Ru. They believe that the 'land without evil' is the resting place of the soul after death.

Guarani

Their arms are the bows and the blow-guns.The Guarani in Brazil are suffering terribly from the theft of almost all their land.

Curare Blowguns

Blowgun hollow tube from which a dart or an arrow is blown by a person's breath. The arrow was usually tipped with a poison, such ascurare, which would stun or kill the struck prey. Blowguns were widely used by prehistoric peoples.

Curare, any of a variety of substances originally used as arrow poisons by Native South Americans in hunting and in warfare. The main active substance of curare, tubocurarine, is an alkaloid extracted from Chondodendron tomentosum, Strychnos toxifera, and other plant species. The poison produces muscle paralysis by interfering with the transmission of nerve impulses at the receptor sites of all skeletal muscle. Muscles with many nerves, such as eye muscles, are affected first.

..........Ama Deus Shamanic Healing is a powerful energy-based Shamanic Healing technique which has been used for the past 6000 years by the Guarani Indians- Brazil. Ama Deus means “Love God” in Portuguese.

Ama Deus Shamanic Healing was first brought to the West by Alberto Aguas, a third –generation Brazilian healer, who lived along side and studied the practices of the Guarani Shamans for many years. The indigenous people live very close to nature and have a profound reverence for all life. According to the Guarani Indians belief system there is no such thing as “illness”.

In their view everything is Spirit and it is the outside forces that cause imbalances to occur. When the outside force is removed, then the effect upon the physical body will be released and balance will be restored once more. The Guarani Shamans apply their knowledge of working with energy when carrying out healing, knowing that the power is coming from a single greater Force. Their words for God and Love are interchangeable and they believe that it is the “love” which is the healing power and they simply are a channel for God’s Love. When using Ama Deus Shamanic Healing, we tap into the energy flow that is connected to the thought - LOVE. Love is the common thread that weaves all healing modalities. When we utilize Ama Deus energy, we are opened to the opportunity for new experiences, new perspectives, expansion and enhancement. When we are connected to healing energy, we are able to flow with the Light and Love of the Creator in order to renew, restore and give love. "Life is in the Love and the Healing. Everything else is just waiting."_____Alberto Aguas "May the sun bring you knew energy by day, may the moon softly
restore you by night, may the rain wash away your worries, may the breeze blow
new strength into your being, may you walk gently through the world and know
it's beauty all the days of your life".~ Apache Blessing

The Yanomami means Human Being are one of the most numerous forest dwelling people in South America. Yanomami community lives in a huge communal house called a 'yano', which can house up to 400 people. The family sleeps in hammocks around their fire. They provide for themselves partly by hunting, gathering and fishing, and largely by growing crops in large gardens cleared from the forest. No hunter ever eats the meat that he has killed, instead sharing it out among friends and family; in return he will be given meat by another hunter.

Yanomamo basketsThe Yanomamo hand carved hard wood arrow

The Yanomami girl

For ceremonies they fix feather decorations and little sticks through nose and ears. If a member of the community dies, the others burn the

dead body and pulverize the bones to a fine powder, believe that only that way the soul of the deceased will be free. Their traditions is shaped by the belief that the natural and spiritual world are a unified force where nature creates everything- sacred. The village that depends on the other village with the goods give wives in return for the goods.The preferred marriage is the bilateral cross-cousin marriage.

The Makuxi (Macuxi) inhabit a land called Raposa- Serra do Sol (Land of the Fox and Mountain of the Sun) a hunting and farming people living in a hilly region known as the 'Guyana shield', on the border between Brazil and Guyana.

Theirs land is a spectacularly beautiful region of mountains, tropical forest and savanna, where they raise cattle. Their houses, are make from wood, clay and palm leaves.Today villages are composed of small houses containing extended families, estimated between 100- 200 inhabitants. The houses seem to be distributed randomly. After marriage, the couple goes to live with the girl's family.

They believe that are descended from children of the sun, who left for their descendants the gift of fire, but also hardships of nature.Christianity is the dominant religion in Brazil. Shamanism has grate influence in Makuxi society. The shaman or medicine man is the religious head of the village.The Makuxi universe is basically composed of three planes superimposed in space that meet on the horizon.

Language (Kaxinawá, Caxinaua, Hantxa Kuin) and they "migrated" from Peru, Huni Kuin is their true name meaning the 'Real People'. Some Kashinawa worked on rubber (tapping) for Brazilian bosses under the debt-peonage system. Others fled to the head waters of the Rio Curanja, a tributary of the Puru, where they lived in relative isolation until the late 1940s. Missionaries began work with the Peruvian Kashinawa in 1955, resulting in the establishment of bilingual schools under the Peruvian Ministry of Education, and in the conversion of many of the Kashinawa to Christianity. Despite these acculturative influences, the Kashinawa continue to maintain much of their indigenous culture. Traditionally, the Kashinawa were animists, believing that all of nature, including humans, has an invisible, spiritual component called yushin. They are using the hallucinogen nishi pae, a brew made of the vine Banisteriopsis (Ayahuasca) and a species of the shrub Psychotria to communicate with the spirits. The Shamans serves a mediator between members of the community and the spirit world.

They have a three primary ceremonies- initiation rites ( nixpu pimai ), fertility rites ( kachanawa ), and the headman's ritual ( chidin ). Initiation rites are a month long series of rituals held every four or five years during the "green corn moon" (full moon) in December and January to initiate children. Fertility rites are held one or more times a year to attract the spirits of fertility to the village. The headman's ritual is held whenever tensions within the village threaten the social fabric- emphasizes of the unity of men. After the death, there is believe, that spirit join the ancestors.

“The shaman gives and takes life. To become a shaman, you go alone into the forest and wrap your entire body in embira. You lie down at a path intersection with your arms and legs outstretched. First come the night butterflies, the husu, who completely cover your body. Next comes the yuxin who eats the husu until reaching your head. Then you grab him tightly. He transforms into a murmuru palm, which is covered in spines. If you’re strong enough and don’t let go, the murmuru transforms into a snake, which wraps around your body. If you keep hold, he transforms into a jaguar. You continue holding him. And this continues until finally you’re left holding nothing. You’ve won the ordeal and you can speak: you explain that you want to receive muka and he gives it to you”. http://pib.socioambiental.org

Kaxinawa

The Kanamari (Canamari) are very important people of the Amazonian region, calling themselves Tukuna. They originally lived in the tributaries of the upper-middle Juruá River, in the Brazilian state of Amazonas. The Kanamari are today situated in different Indigenous Reservations- the Vale do Javary. They speak a language from the Katukinan family. Tribe is rich in songs, dance and many traditions.

The Kanamari has a long history of human settlement. First contact was 1940. They were attuned to the ecological realities of their environment from many millennia’s. They live in the word which can mean ‘world’ and ‘forest’ but also ‘time’. Above them is the sky, Kodoh, and inside the sky is the Kodoh Naki, the Inner Sky, which is where the Kohana gods live. When one dies the Kohana come to earth to take the soul (ikonanim) to the Inner Sky following the Rainbow-path. Everyone in the Inner Sky is young. In time she drinks the vomit of the Elder King Vulture, a being that only exists in the Inner Sky, which the Kohana-gods call their manioc drink (koya). Once she has drunk from the celestial drink she receives a body, made of the leaves of the buriti palm, and is told that she will not return to earth.The time between death and the reception of a new body in the Inner Sky is equivalent to the time of mourning (mahwa) on earth. Kanamari souls have two related characteristics- they are highly mobile and they always try to attach themselves to bodies. During the mourning period the soul moves incessantly between the earth and the sky, and when it is in earth it approaches the bodies of its kin, particularly those of small children, in the process causing illness. The soul needs to be ‘blown away’ (-topohman) by a man who has drunk the juice of the omamdak, which literally means ‘tree bark’ and seems to refer to absolutely any tree. Omamdak drinking is accessible to all adult men.

After the fall of the Old Sky, which created the world as it exists today, the distance between earth and the sky became far too great to be overcome under normal conditions. However, the powerful shaman Dyanim was, not long ago, able to ascend to the Inner Sky with the aid of his spirit-familiars (dyohko). It is from what he told the Kanamari that they know what life in the Inner Sky is like. They say that everything which exists on earth exists in the Inner Sky, except that, after death, everyone is kin. There are no sub-groups in the Inner Sky, and not even differences between people. Everyone lives together and there is no fighting. This includes the Panoan-speaking groups, which the Kanamari fear on earth; the Kulina who caused most of their suffering.Shamans have a surplus of souls which are their dyohko-familiars. Dyohko refers to powerful old spirits, to the earth-bound soul of the shaman and to the magical darts which sorcerers throw at the victims in order to inflict disease. The shaman’s body is impregnated with dyohko substance which is what permits him to extract dyohko-darts from his patients, but he also has any number of dyohko-familiars which he cannot, however, store within his body, at the risk of losing his mind, and so keeps them in a pouch where they should be regularly fed with tobacco snuff. These are often animal-spirits that have been on earth since the beginning of time and had, probably, been previously familiarized by a shaman who has since died. Familiars call shamans i-warah, ‘my body-owner’, and the process of familiarization is one of reducing the spirit, transforming it into a stone which can be safely stored. Upon a shaman’s death these familiars regain their bodies and need to be re-familiarized by another shaman, lest they start inflicting harm upon the living. Furthermore, the shaman himself has a dyohko soul, called Pidah diwahkom (‘Jaguar Heart’), which assumes a Jaguar form when the shaman’s body dies. It is imperative that these be familiarized by another shaman for they too harm the living.

The shaman’s ‘Jaguar Heart’ is also called Kohana. Some Kanamari believe that the soul of shaman does not go into the Inner Sky at all but instead becomes a Kohana here on earth. Others say that the shaman is also able to familiarize the celestial Kohana, transforming them into large stones which are used in the Kohana-becoming ritual. This contradiction seems to express a fundamental property of the Kohana, which is its ability to cut across realms which should be separate, such as the earth and the sky, the living and the dead, Jaguars and humans. These dyohko are essential in the Kohana-becoming ritual. In these rituals a shaman inserts Kohana-odyohko into living men, dressed in the buriti-palm vestment known as wakwama, which are the form of the bodies of the Kohana. The men then become parok, a term which implies loss of consciousness, and it is the dyohko that sings through them. The songs that the Kohana sing are called Kohana nawa waik, ‘Kohana’s songs’ and it is said of them that they are Kodoh-warah, sky body-owners. The Kohana sing these songs to the women, who must learn them on behalf of humanity, as these songs are essential for the regeneration of life.

The Kohana songs are called ‘sky body-owners’ to distinguish them from the Jaguar songs, which are called Ityonim-warah, ‘forest body-owners’. These are sung in the Pidah-pa (‘Jaguar-becoming’) rituals and they are also simply known as Pidah, ‘Jaguar’. Most are ancient, although new songs are learned by the Pidah nawa nohman, ‘Jaguar’s chanter’, and, unlike the Kohana songs, they are known by the living. One of the purposes of these Jaguar-songs is to effectuate the final stage of the mourning period. Upon the death of an individual, a lock of hair is cut and kept by a close consanguine. When it is decided that the mourning period is over a Pidah Nyanim (‘Large Jaguar’) ritual is held in which the men, now called ‘Jaguars’, bury the lock in the village patio, in an act which is known as ‘to bury our mourning’ (ityowa mahwanim dahmahik). The ritual continues for days as Jaguar songs are sung, led by male ‘Jaguar’s chanters’ and repeated by the women. The purpose of the ritual is to guarantee the regeneration of the forest and of society through the death of humans.Chanting and dancing occur at night and during the day the men go on collective hunting and fishing expeditions. It is said that both the Kohana and the Jaguar make game abundantly available to them during these hunts, as a ‘payment’ (ohunhuk) for the ritual. But these songs are also sung during manioc and pupunha drink production, in fruit gathering expeditions and so on. The Jaguar songs, being very old, are associated with the ancestors (-mowarahi), those body has been buried and through whom the forest continues to be productive. They are thus sung to ensure the regeneration of the forest and of society.

Kanamari

TheMaku (Macu) Indians reside in the Northwestern part of the Brazilian Amazon close to the Peruvian border. They are one of the last groups of nomadic tribal peoples in the Amazon. Maku migrate across the watershed regions,wherever they find good conditions for hunting.

They are divided into six groups with its own language and territory. Nadob- Kabory, Dow, Yuhupde, Hupda, Bara- Kakwa and Nukak. Practically, all the Maku speak their own native language, some of them speak the Tukano languages. On the Brazilian side of the border, five indigenous territories were ratified, Upper and Middle Negro River 1 and 2,Tea River and Apaporis River.

The traditional Maku village had a population between 25-30 inhabitants- six domestic group- hearths. Each group possesses its own fire hearth around its members gather to eat and sleep. A village of 25 inhabitants has about three houses. The average of endogamic marriages, between people born in the same region group is around 80 percent.

The men of a village usually hunt within a radius of 8-10 km around the village, radiating out from this territory to a series of paths, linking together. Each village possessed an average of 8 hunt camps. Relocation of the place site is about 5 years, explore new hunting territories.

Cosmology, the Maku universe takes the form of an upright egg, with three levels of worlds: 1..world off shadows-all monsters such as venomous snakes, scorpions, jaguars and so on.2...our world- forest and 3... the world of the light above the sky, where their ancestors and the creator live.

Each older men could be the shaman which are two types: the curers (using spells) and jaguar-men.

Maku

Many Marubo Indians became directly involved in the rubber trade, locked into debt by the rubber traders.They are located in the middle valley of the Curuca and Itui Rivers in the Javari region (Brazil-Peru) full of small hills covered by tropical rainforest. Their language is Pano which includes other native languages such as Shipibo, Matses, Korubo and Matis. They build long houses, located on the top of the hill and covered by palm straw from the roof to the ground. The Marubo Indians dominate all the other tribes in the Javari Valley. The tribe obtained firearms through their contact with white people. Ayahuasca can be drink, when men attained an age of about thirty years, till this time Marubo young men are limited to serving the needs of older men. Shamanism and medicine are all male tasks. Women are responsible for harvesting crops, cooking, weaving hummocks and so on. All body painting is performed by women. One of the most interesting ritual is the Ceremony of Aco- which is a giant log transporting from the forest to the maloca ( big house).

Marubo

Matis Indians. They are a small group of panoan-speaking native, who live in the Yavari (Javari) Valley in Brazil and the frontier of Peru still live like they have for hundred of years. The Matis (The Matsés) people (who are also commonly called Mayorunas in Brazil) are often affectionately referred to as the "cat people" due to the characteristic "whiskers" and facial tattoos. Presently, there are about 2200 Matis living in the Yavarí Valley of Peru and Brazil.

Matis blowguns (blowpipes) are works of art decorated with mosaics made from pieces of turtle shells, where palm darts are tipped with poison extracted from the curare vine- modern anesthetics. They also do make komo poison from the awaka plant, to poison fish.

In the past all Matis lived in longhouses. Now moving their villages every few years, when game run low. Traditionally, they had to be naked to enter the longhouse. If there has been a recent death in the family, longhouse was burnt. During the( txawa tanek-dance) participants paint themselves red with urucum (anatto juice) and imitating the haunting sounds of the pig. The ritual is designed to attract peccary to the hunters during the following day's hunt.

Mapwa tanek is the capybara ritual, performed by young men, who cover their bodies in wet clay. Mariwin ritual, where two people emerge from the forest as the physical embodiment of ancestral spirits. The bodies are painted black or yellow, and they wear red clav masks and green ferns.

Matis

The Tenharim Indians are known as "Boca-Negra" or "Black Mouth" due to their corporal painting designs.Tenharim is the name by which are known three indigenous groups who live today in the mid Madeira River, in the Southern portion of the State of Amazonas.

They produce, such as brazil nuts, copaiba and manioc flour, salt, oil and soap. The Tenharim groups live in the region anthropologist’s call it Madeira-Tapajós (after the two major rivers that cut through it), each of them located in a different area that is geographically identified: Marmelos River, Sepoti River.

They dance in circles, adorned accordingly with headdresses and skirt, holding long bamboo flutes called Yreru, which they point to the center, while marking the rhythm stomping their right foot. Later the women enter the circle of dancers, under the arm of their husbands.

The rule of post-marital residence among the Tenharim is patrimonial. He/she can only marry someone that belongs to the opposite half. They live on hunting, fishing and gathering of forest products. They leave in different directions to hunt and fish.

Tenharim

The Ticuna are a very artistic tribe whose talents include basketry, wood and stone sculpture, and mask making. They also make bark cloth which is a natural fibre, paper-like fabric which they often paint. This fabric is often incorporated into many things such as masks and dolls.The Ticuna Indians, also spelled Tukuna or Tikuna, reside in the Brazilian Amazon rain forest near the borders of Peru and Columbia. There are over 70 established villages in the Alto Solimones, in the area of the rivers Santo Antonio do Ica and Solimones River. Most Tikunas live in established villages in large hut-like dwellings called malocas.The maloca is the "Long House" of the indigenous people of the Amazon..

In their mythological complex, it represents an anaconda, whose mouth faces the river and is represented by the door of the men; the opposite end of the maloca; represents its tail placed over the door of the women. The long house constitutes the axis of religious ceremonies and for this reason the spaces, beams, posts and roofs represent the universe, while the different structural designs, which enable light to be projected from the roof saddle, facilitate the observation of sun rays, which establish the agricultural cycle.

Traditionally the maloca serves as a multi-family residence but also as a ceremonial center. It is a place, where the ritual imbibing of coca and tobacco goes on and traditional community dances are held. The maloca is equally the ancestral path of water, like tree branches, connects the communities with the mouth: the River of Milk - that is the river of the white water - which symbolizes the branched stem of the hallucinogenic plant "kana"- yajè.

They wear the hair cut across the forehead and hanging it down, full length behind. They wear armlets of bright-coloured feathers and paint and tattoo their faces in various patterns. The dead are buried in great earthen jars, together with food and, in the case of a warrior, broken weapons, and the ceremony concluding with a drinking feast. The Ticuna Indians practice a ceremony called “Pelazon” . The four-day ceremony is only practiced during a full-moonwhen a girl has her first menstrual cycle, she is placed into isolation in a small room and no one (other than several older women whose job it is to educate her) is allowed to visit the girl.During her isolation, she is taught about the myths, heroes, and history of the Ticunas. This period of isolation varies, but can last up to six months, after which thePelazonceremony commences.One feature that characterizes the ceremony is the use of the black dye obtained from fruit of the “huito” tree (Genipa americana). The entire body of the girl is painted black withhuitoand the symbol of her clan is painted on her face, and interestingly girls are not permitted to intermarry within their own clan.

During the ceremony, Ticuna girls are dressed with eagle feathers and wear a crown that is initially used to cover her eyes preventing her from seeing.For four long days the girls endure a rather loud ceremony with constant music primarily drum-beating, singing, dancing, and through the purification by fire.

Physically they are one of the finest tribes of the upper Amazon.They live byhuntingand fishing, and the preparation and sale of thecuraripoison, here call from them the "Ticuna" poison, for use upon blow-gun arrows. In this manufacture they are recognized experts and hold the process a secret, although it isknowntheStrychnos castelneanaandCocculus toxicoferaare among the ingredients.They also make bark cloth which is a natural fibre, paper-like fabric which they often paint. This fabric is often incorporated into many things such as masks and dolls.

Ticuna

TheWaimiri-Atroari Indianslive in deep in the Amazon Rain forest of Northern Brazil. They call themselves Kinja people. The communal residential structure is built in a circulars format, where most of the people live. These traditional houses were of palm leaves. The Mydy Taha are located near large rivers and serves not only as a settlement, but also as a ritual space for ceremonies. They also celebrate the Christian God. Traditionally, they also referred to the sky as made of stone, and to another world, below the rivers, populated by beings similar to those of this world. Animals come from the sky and replenish those hunted by men.

The mythical figure Mawá, who climbed up to the sky on a liana that he cut. The forest is inhabited by various kinds of supernatural beings, referred to as yirkwá, yamaí, and yananá.Shamans mediate between spiritual beings (karaiwa), during sessions in the dark. There are few shamans still alive and practice shamanism. Tobacco and other drugs are not used by Waimiri-Atroari shamans.

The Waimiri-Atroari perform many ceremonies, some of the most important ceremonies

are for the initiation of male children at about 3 years of age, to make the child grow, and be a successful hunter. This complex series of ceremonies includes whipping rites and the bathing of the child with an infusion of red karowri leaves ( Arrabidaea chica ) mixed with other leaves and tree barks. These traditional houses were of palm leaves. Each ceremony lasts for three days.

Death was associated with the separation of the akaha (soul or spirit) from the body. The akaha was thought to return by pathways to the forest and old village sites where it had lived in the past.

There are a lot of tribes that live in the Amazon rainforest, many tribes have a different cultures and traditions, but some are still uncontacted. For instance, in Peru according to (Dr. Dan Pantone) are at least 15 uncontacted tribes living in remote areas of the Peruvian Amazonian Rainforest.

These include the Tagaeri (border of Ecuador with Peru) who are closely related to the Waorani tribe. Next uncontacted tribe is Matses related to the Tagaeri (Huaorani, Tarmenane tribes) living in the Yavari Mirim area (border Peru with Brazil). Brazilian government released photographs of Cabellos Largos (long haired natives) - picture. Cashibo- Cacataibo native live in area north of Tingo Maria in the foothills of the Andes Mountains and chosen to live apart from the outside world. Inconahua tribe are related to Shipibo-(River Indians). Marunahua Indians called Chitonahuas live in the Province of Atalaya. Next are Mascho-Piro- (lost tribe) belong to the Mashco-Piro people and live along the Las Piedras River. Kugapakori-Nahua (Yura, Yurahahua or Yora) and Madre de Dios – live inTerritorial Reserve.

The unknown Kreen-Akrore are a forest Indian tribe in the Amazonian basin of Brazil, who till these days successfully manage purposely avoiding people, and are only tribe that kills everybody they see, other Indian tribes keep at least children life.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhAvuPlhdNA

TheSuruwahapeople are isolated Stone Age tribe. Everyone life expectancy is 35 year old, they kill themselves by poison due beliefs, that to be reunited with own family who also already committed suicide.

The Korubo or Korubu is the name given to a tribe of indigenous people living in the Javari Valley, in the Western Amazon Basin -Brazil. The group calls themselves 'Dslala', and in Portuguese they are referred to as caceteiros (clubbers). Much of what the outside world knows of this group is based on the research of Brazilian explorer Sydney Possuelo who first contacted the tribe in October 1996 and journalist Paul Raffaelle. The Korubo Indians are the last unknown tribe to be contacted in the Amazon. They first made contact in 1996. The Korubo tribe is known locally in Brazil as the Caceteiros which literally means "clubber" in Portuguese. Subsequently, they because known as the "Head-Bashers" in the popular press. These native Amazonians received this name because they carry war clubs that they use to fight with in battle. The Korubo Indians use to practice infanticide. When a child was born with a birth defect, the baby was killed.

Cabellos Largos

The Kugapakori Nahua Nanti park is in the south-east of Peru.

Many tribes chosen voluntarily live in separation from rest of the world to avoid contact with invasion of loggers, prospectors, cattle ranchers and miners, who are illegally entering their territory and devastating the land around them, using increasingly violent tactics. Almost all tribes are living in “a state of chronicle fear”. The Indians still must fight for the survival and the protection of the tribes, which is questioned again and again. A human banner made up of more than 1,000 people- BELÉM- Brazil, seen and photographed from the air, sent the message "SOS Amazon" to the world- action taken by indigenous people.

A marvellous family is Mother Nature (the Mother of us all) with thousands of natives almost beyond belief, living in Amazon Region, where life is made up of wonder, beauty and also of terrors we can dimly understand. The story of the birth of different tribes and the account of its remarkable survival, the people of every century and of all lands, lifted men’s hearts and fired men’s soul in the eternal search for the good and the true, because land interpret life and good. We can watch their failures and their successes in wresting Nature, her guarded secrets. Native people are waged between the forces of truth and falsehood, charity and corporation greed, sympathy and spite, between good and evil. The history is repeating again and again like we can see on North American Indians. The opening up of the West, particularly the extension of our railroads across the Prairies, killed off almost all the bison’s, and the Indians were reduced to the verge of starvation. Hunting was no longer possible as a means of living. Coming of these companies brought profound changes. Wealth, was a mark of a man’s importance, not however, the wealth that he possessed, but the wealth given away when a man laid claim to an honour with dignity. The greedy man, and their rich social and religious life brought to stop the way of life, where ancient knowledge become the past, remembered only by a few of the older men. It is hard, to say what the future holds for these Tribes all over the world, from Amazon to Siberia, but there is believe that Nature has to plan so that the world may go on in the best way for the humanity.

Native people have passionate concern for truth, for the welfare of the forest, animals, for moral climate of justice, peace for themselves and others. They are the mysterious reservoirs of strength, where mind and spirit enable them triumph spirituality, even when they engulfed by disaster.

American Zuni Indians have a profound saying:”Custom is the cup of Life”.

In the old days, in Europe, under the simple and democratic social organization of the patriarchal clan or tribe, there were no basic distinctions such as “rich and poor”. The equal distribution of the land was epitomized by the simple sentence: “The earth is the Lord’s”.

Each farmmen had the privilege of keeping the land allotted to him in trust. In a collateral movement with the new agricultural economy and monarchial political system, towns, even cities emerged to complicate the already difficult situation. Once tribe was landless and dispossessed, the poor countrymen was driven by hunger into the towns, where was victimized.

Today tropical rainforests are disappearing from the face of the globe. Despite growing international concern, rainforests continue to be destroyed. Remaining areas has been impacted by human activities and no longer retains its full original biodiversity. However, this destruction can be slowed, stopped, and in some cases even reversed by responsible development of rainforests by rehabilitation and restoring degraded forest lands. Historic approaches to rainforest conservation have failed due economic incentives and corporate greed. Countries with significant forest cover are generally among the world’s poorest and can’t effort expend protected areas, increase surveillance and so on.

All things must be paid for-mutual exchange is the law, the movement and flow of life as a great exchange between all beings. You get because you give. There are no such things as independence. We are all dependent upon one another. What we contribute to forest and its inhabitants it will return in other form, or measure to us. Perhaps the measure is oxygen, or money, there are no bargains. The exchange is always equal. We depend on each other for our very lives, for we are all one in reality, and are nothing without each other. A great benefit has a great reward. It is never the method of job that needs to be changed; it is the people holding it. Big corporations need to change their attitude, mental outlook, to start thinking positively and creatively, instead of only greed and money, money…They need to share the wealth of the rainforest. It is never too late. Never! Or is it already too late? We must not allow our thinking to be governed by the conditions that surround us and telling as only from one narrow point what we need to do. Confusion is the failure, because destiny and desire are the same things.

The power is equally available to all, and it works in the life of each man according to his vision and understanding. Remember that when you look into the world, Spirit will always be looking back at you. When you need to be heard, Spirit will be listening.

Pic.1... Black Caimans live in Central and South America. The Amazon River Basin has a tropical rainforest climate. Caimans look like alligators as their lower teeth do not show when their mouths are closed. They have sharper longer teeth than alligators.

The Nature is and was from day one man’s teacher. We must preserve our Nature, the forest, the rivers , the land and discard all that is unhealthy, what is harming us and others, if we lake to truly build great civilization for future ages. We must preserve the earth beauty, rich heritage and the knowledge of the world, because Time covers up the history of mankind, so that all that we know of the past is only small part of what has actually existed. Some of the buried cities and lost civilizations have been found, and the people traced records they left behind. We know that our planet earth is full of living things. Even trees are a live, wherever we turn, there is life. We know, that not all the things we see are living things. In certain cases they are a certain relationship between living things and things that are not alive. However, at the all, what is life? Beauty and imagination, the greatest emotion of the human heart- love, sorrow, reverence and our personal inspiration, interpretation- love of the mind and heart is without the limits.

The early art of the world was centered round the several religious of the human race and imagination, driving forces that pushed a wedge of the history of their days. The sum of all, that is best in the mind and heart, and soul of the human race, and a fragment of bygone time. Once and for all, life is the breath of the beauty in the soul of man, the glory of the world throughout all ages. You laugh and you cry because you are “made that way” to seek peace, knowledge, goodness and oneness with the forces that course through the universe and nature. Mother Earth with thousand actually millions of children, almost beyond belief, so that is life everywhere and everybody want live life best they can. As time pass, the rivers dried up, the things in our lives are changing, the whole universe is moving and changing, but human torch is carrying from generation to generation, but where we go from now and then, surly going to be on us. One of the future sources of wealth is the forest, land and water, human made selves’ importance; gold, diamantes are in the back of the list, because can’t be eaten.

The Tucano (Tukano) community is considered to have the friendliest people.

Tucano

From the vast expanses of the rainforest and Amazon waters to its marshes, mangrove swamps, from its many thousands of miles of sand and rocky shores, the rainforest produces life in fantastic abundance as environments for life support, directly or indirectly.

The Family live in the traditional way of life

Welcoming "Caxiri" dance ceremonies, very special to the village community.

Jungle flowers.

Healing

Rio Negro in Brazil

Rio Negro (Black River).Named for its dark waters, the Rio Negro is the largest left tributary of the Amazon River and the largest blackwater river in the world. The Rio Negro flows into the Rio Solimões at the “Meeting of the Waters” to form the silty Amazon River below Manaus, Brazil and is navigable for 450 miles. During the rainy season, April to October, the river is a succession of lagoons, full of long islands, intricate channels, cataracts, rapids and whirlpools. In the dry season, you’ll find many sandy beaches along the Rio Negro for swimming, sunbathing and relaxing. The Rio Negro provides an excellent mirror reflection of the dense rain forest, supports a large fishing industry and has numerous turtle beaches.

Tucano family- they are very generous sharing the stories, ceremonies and healing practices.

The Tucano are known for their wooden artwork; funeral masks, weapons, tucum bags, hammocks and so on. They are highly decorated trade people, and deeply spiritual, where the land is the origin of all life, and is the gift of theirs ancestors.

Entrance into the Rainforest

Shaman at "Reserva Taruma"

The Achuar were one of the Jivaroan groups still to be spared off the western contact. The name Achuar means” the people of the aguaje palm” or people of the lowlands and call themselves Anonymous.They follow an astronomical calendar of seasons with a great understanding of their dream-sharing practices, and speak a Shuar language.

Shamans Lodge

The Shuar Indian Equador

Shuar girls- Ecuador

They are mostly situated along either site of the border in between Ecuador and Peru, accessible only by air, living on the Pastaza River. The home is settled near a river, build like with a large oval shape, without outer walls, with a high roof, made out of palm trees. A large garden surrounded the home on the outside. The size of a house is very important to them, the bigger the house is more wife’s fit there, which play big role with man’s ego, than man will be considered great man.

Shamanism is practice and present in Achuar lifestyle, where many animals and plants are understood to possess human souls. The only way for hunter to be successful is to live in harmony with the game he hunts and with its guardian jungle spirits, known as kuntiniu nukuri- game mothers. There is believe that entities possessing human souls have the ability to communicate through language and signs, were Ayahuasca is a ritual sacrament in their religion, and helping achieve strong vision or dream –(karamratin-to dream).

They placing the deceased in a hollowed-out log, buried in the middle of the house; remembrance of the individual, remaining body parts.

Two kind of dreams are essential for the Achuar ; one revealing but also foretelling. Both types of dreams are classified differently. Normal dream, the energy dissipated in the short run, but vision dream possess more energy, play out over much longer period. The people gather together in their villages in small groups several hours before sunrise and share a sweet tea- like infusion called wayus and begin sharing their dreams about hunt, conflict, illness, spirits and many more. Dreams in which spirits communicate are called wakan manu. They see the dream as a custom of their ancestors and same time, taking advantage of time before day starts. Certain rules are commonly applied to illuminate the dreams related to waking life. A dream about something bad can mean something good. Sometimes a dreams are understood during the wayusa (stimulating plant-leaves, flowers-Holly family) as a predicting a future event, and also purpose for another person.

Arutam is the Achuar protective spirit responsible for the spiritual power, the vision-dream energy, which is supported by ayahuasca, maikua (also known as malicaua or uantu) identified as Natemamo ritual.

Arutan can appear to the participant in many forms, often as the boa or jaguar. The meaning of the many dreams in any specific circumstance is an ongoing experiential event for the individual or community.

The Shaman invokes the spirit of anaconda. The warriors protect him. The women shaman, followed by her maids, brings the calabash of a magic drink. The anaconda spirit guides the shaman into the world of spiritual foresight. After drinking the ayahuasca, he asks anaconda for a protection, while dancers portray the movement of anaconda's body. He leads his dancers in a mystic dream induced by ayahuasca vine, while musician play and sing the story. The dance finishes as the Shaman offershis woman partner, the anaconda queen, to the serpent.

Help us to stop the destruction of our forest!

"The destruction of the Ecuadorian rainforest has been going on for many decennia. The main culprit for this destruction has been the oil industry. About a 100.000 barrels of oil are sucked out of the forestdaily. With open pits and oil spills polluting the waters all over the Amazonian rainforest, and thus poisoning the plants and animals of our unique eco-system.""In Gualaquiza a new danger has arrived on the horizon. Valuable minerals have been found in the rainforest in the vincinity of our town. Test-drills have convinced a foreign mining-company to soon start with commercial mining in the rainforest, primarily for gold. As is widely known, mining for gold is one of the most polluting activities by mankind. Although we, the Shuar, heavily oppose the mining, the leaders of our country are somehow not prepared to listen to us. Blinded as they are from the lucrative money involved in digging for gold.""Everything is connected in this world. I am connected to the rainforest. But you are just as connected to it. Every piece of original forest that is destroyed is a piece of you which is destroyed. We, the Shuar, are prepared to take up arms to defend our rights. As we have never been conquered by others. But we would rather wish for our leaders to return to their senses. And stop the mining for gold in Gualaquiza before it is too late.""You can help us too. If you are a journalist or know a journalist who is willing to write a story about our struggle to save our environment, then please be welcome to come to Gualaquiza to interview our people. Also, if you have any influence on politicians in your country, please raise our cause with them. Because the destruction of the rainforest also concerns them."On behalf of the Shuar, thank you for your help!Miguel Chiriap

One of the Seven Wonders of Nature: Will it Stay that Way?

This month the Amazon was designated one of the seven wonders of nature. And yet, here in Peru, over 70% of the rainforest has been handed over to oil companies for exploration and production as well as other extractive industries. Unfortunately, news of the crisis in the Amazon doesn't seem to have been given much attention by international media...

What will be left of the Amazon after the next couple of decades of exploitation? Can we really afford to sit back and watch the worlds last great rainforest be destroyed? Are we aware of the impact this destruction would have on the rest of the planet if it is allowed to continue?

Please help The Arkana Alliance continue our work protecting the Peruvian Amazon, its people and its ancient traditions.

MANIOC (MAMA) - The main ingredient of Chicha; the healthy food-drink of Amazon. For Chicha, Achuar women cultivate in gardens (Chacras) 17 types of MAMA; the sweet manioc (Yuca, Casava). Originally, to make Chicha, cooked mama was mashed then fermented with saliva.

COCA - Without the help of Coca leaf, above 3,000 m. (9,000 ft), it is impossible to live.

Kid abandoned by Bora-Bora tribe Shuar Shaman and Healer

Anavilhanas Archipelago. The world’s largest fresh water archipelago of river islands, Anavilhanas is located on the Rio Negro in the Brazilian Amazon - 100 km upstream from Manaus. A unique ecological system and preservation area of great biodiversity, Anavilhanas is made up of 400 islands covered with native forest - a natural labyrinth with diverse landscapes and wildlife.

Picture 2...Everybody are smoking Mapacho (jungle tobacco) for the protection.

Tobacco Mapacho is one of the most important plants and is considered very sacred by Amazonian shamans, use in combination with other plants in shamanic practices. Some shaman drink the juice of tobacco leaves alone as a source of vision. Mapacho is used extensively in healing practices and is considered a medicine. The medicine men blow smoke or spit tobacco over the sick person, or is taken during ceremonies with Ayahuasca amongst the many tribes. The Tucano people of the Vaupes often rub the leaves over bruises. Amongst the Boras, fresh leaves are crushed and poultice over infected wounds. Tikuna tribe mixes the crushed leaves with the oil from palms and rub into the hair to prevent balding. The Jivaros take tobacco therapeutically for chills and snake bites.

Mapacho called 'masatos' Tobacco Plant

Uncaria tomentosa is a liana, woody vine, deriving its name from hook-like thorns that resemble the claws of a cat, used interchangeably in the rainforests by the tribes, and has long recorded history of healing properties. In herbal medicine today, cat’s claw is employed around the world for many different conditions including immune disorders, rheumatism, gastritis, cancer and many more, and for this reason could be called as the “opener of the way” for its ability to cleanse the entire intestinal tract.

Cat's Claw or (Una de gato)

U. tomentosa can grow up to 30 m Uncaria tomentosa (popularly known in English as Cat's Claw, The indigenous peoples of South and Central America have used plant for medicinal purposes for two thousand years or more.

Maikiua (Datura)Another sacred plant that is use in Shuar ceremonies is Maikiua, known better in the rest of the world as the Trumpet Flower. They solve the leaves of this plant in water and then use this water to enhance the effects of Natem so that even deeper healing can occur. It helps to open clear spaces in which profound visions may occur. In more advanced shamanic practices Maikiua is used to block the normal senses for several days so that the shaman-in-training learns how to use his or her higher senses.

Datura plant

The cassava (originally
Mandioca, yuca, manioc) appears in many recipes. It is used in several
ways: as different types of flour and the famous tucupi juice of the cassava
bananas. Often, canjica, porridge and fish are their first meal of the day. Around
the world, cassava is a vital staple for about 500 million people. Cassava's
starchy roots produce more food energy per unit of land than any other staple
crop. Its leaves, commonly eaten as a vegetable in parts of Asia and Africa and
South America provide vitamins and protein. Nutritionally, the cassava is
comparable to potatoes, except that it has twice the fiber content and a higher
level of potassium. There are two varieties of cassava – sweet and
bitter. Both contain Prussic acid (hydrocyanic acid), which can cause cyanide
poisoning.

Pic.1 Pic. 2 Pic.3 Pic.4

Picture.5

Picture.1... "Sacred Meeting of the Waters" where Amazon and the Rio Negro meet.

Picture 2..The B.B. an old lady is both a Catholic and a spiritualist at the same time. People from Brazil and all over the world come to her place to heal themselves and find out more about health and life. A cleansing bath is a traditional rainforest healing, they enhance beauty and purity, cleanse our souls and bodies before ritual or celebration work. This herbal bath is a bland of salts, peppermint, arruda, Valerian root prepared as an infusion, strained and mixed with water. The B.B. calling upon the spirits of the herbs, as well faced the river, when she poured the medicinal cleansing bath over shoulders, while saying a sacred prayer called “washing the soul”. The second step is purification, where B.B. used an infusion of different aromatic herbs and then, later on, opened the ceremony by chanting and praying in front of the alter. After minutes, she called gatekeeper spirit to work with her. According to the difficulty of the question, the keeper spirit call on higher ranked entities as appropriate. On the end, she is supported by her daughter, so she did not fall down, when spirit left her body.

If you belong to an indigenous tribe from Brazil or Peru or you find out that some tribe is currently missing on the list, please contact us to contribute information to our site.

Picture 1 and 2....Iquitos Picture 3.. Brazil-pink dolphins

Famous pink dolphins at Novo Airao Brazil known with their healing power. Native people believe that dolphins (inia geoffrensis) are constantly connected with the universal vibrations coming from nature’s source. Being with them helps people regain their natural healthy state.

The Iquitos-Peru (floating village on the Amazon River). Houses are built on balsa logs, floating when river levels rise.

Today there has been a revival of interest of the shaman who is also healer and medicine man, who can access to other realms of consciousness and become a master of spirit entities on different cosmic levels or planes to seek the power, vertically aligned around a central axis or World Tree. World Tree in the cosmology connects the three planes. The crown is heavens (more levels), the trunk is the Middleworld (when we are), and the roots interpret the Underworld. From culture to culture these transformations take different forms, according to mythic universe, and nature of the hierarchies of gods, who dwell there. I mentioned most important gods (Slavic) in my book Before You and Siberian Keepers, which are highly structured. The concept of a system of rivers and sky is complex religion, as in the case of Siberian Shaman’s.

The mystical love for the land included within it recognition of the bond between humans and the earth and the love of the natural world is way of life of the aboriginal people, all over the world. Feeling for spiritual entity, places of power were natural vital life force- universal divine manifest. The concept of balance comes up in Amazon that all aspect of life are working harmoniously together, and a health life maintained balance between the material and spiritual realms. Of course, the importance of land extended to all aspects of the culture, and chants, names were filled with a multiplicity of names for gods and places, were spirits are acknowledged.

Everyone is a part of the continuous story of life, including native people, who like to choose live life on its own, supported by spirits and natures and the distance stars. The development of the earth and the process of change can be traced thousands of years, but till now, nature had been setting the stage. Thousands of years ago man conquered land and see. Till to-day, if you could stand on the spot, where the hunters waited, you would see that theirs dream has come true.

The old religion of Amazonia is shamanism, the worship without scripture, the faith which had no books; the hallmarks of the shaman were ecstatic trembling, involuntary speaking and singing. Along with the shaman's role in life, though, there were the hallmarks of what seem to be basic Bon beliefs: the cult of the eternal blue sky, the veneration of fire, the invocation of ancestor-worship; incense offerings to the sky, prayers to hills and mountains with offeringtill these days, all over the world. The Old Religion is closer in spirit to Native American traditions or to the Shamanism of the Arctic and Amazon. Its teaching from nature was inspired by the movements of the sun, moon, stars, birds, and the cycle of the seasons and the continuous stream of life and death. The heavenly dance was seen in the sky, in the moon, who monthly dies and is reborn and in the sun whose waxing light brings summer’s warmth and whose waning brings the chill of winter.

Amount the Tucano Indian, the Ayahuasca wine was created in the mythical world, therefore, has sacred status; ritual to return to the uterus, the creation of the humanity and all universe to the establishment of the social order. The Milky Way appears like is described in the book Transformation and the Healing by Ayahuasca Spirit in the Amazonian Rainforest. A withdrawal of consciousness from the everyday world, shift mind toward the inner world of reverie, if you are ready. Altered states of consciences (hypnosis) are universal phenomena also cultural pattering or religion. Alpha, beta, theta and delta brain waves are the building blocks of our consciousness, underlying our state of consciousness at any given time. I would like to very shortly mention who they are, and what function they have. Beta brain waves are the fastest (14-38 cycles). They are produced by your thinking mind-your conscious process. It is your everyday life and can navigate to high anxiety, panic, judging and so on, but beta waves is vital to the creative process we desperately need to externally express our creative mind. Alpha (8 to 14 cycles/sec.) brain waves is our relaxed awareness, our daydream and provide the gateway to mediation. It is some kind of bridge or link between the conscious and subconscious mind. Alfa help us to remember our dreams. Theta (4-8 cycles/sec.) brain waves are produce by the subconscious mind, present in REM (rapid eye movement). This is the place when we collect our “baggage” or “garbage” or when we can heal our body or our mind. Delta (1/2 -4 cycles) is slowest of all frequencies is an unconscious mind. Delta is our internal clock and is present when all of the others frequencies turn off in sleep and provides deep levels of psychic awareness. Delta has been called the “orienting response” because of the time and space, with warning system when danger is present. Delta is connected with the concept of the collective unconscious-inner spirituality or cosmic consciousness. Seems complicated, but ancient knowledge is talking about it in different forms and names, for instance: New science call the Three selves- Superconcious, Conscious, SubconsciousMind, when ancient teaching call it High Self, Basic Self, and Middle Self. The trance is stronger where is supported by personal believe system. Light (explanation in book Siberian Keepers) shamans believe that doing good for the community creates a greater good for his personality. Being good means doing good. The great destiny of man is not only to think and feel, but create, make great things happen, perhaps the most important kind of ambition is spiritual truth, positive kind of existence, because without truth to guide us, raw power can takes over.

Picture 2... Meeting of the Waters.The meeting of the waters is natural phenomenon caused from the confluence of dark waters of the Rio Negro and clay waters of Rio Solimoes for about 5 miles (8 Km) to form the Amazon River. A truly amazing spectacle to behold, the warmer, clearer black waters of the Rio Negro run side by side with the salty, muddy brown waters of Rio Solimoes.

According to native belief in the area the “Three mouth” (located at the Anavilhanas area) represents a pilgrimage for the faithful. The tradition says, that is good to receive the ritual cleansing from “Yara”, before to do a very simple ceremony for thanksgiving. (Yara is the goddess of the rivers, waterfalls and lakes..)

… The Earths nearest companions in the heavens belong to the same family, the family of the Sun. Nature’s living family also belongs under the sun, the story of growing things in great plant world from tiny, simple, or complicated process, with colors of nature called ‘the big ball’ we are on. The Earth climate, wind and the weather, the earthquakes, volcanoes, the tilt and motions of the earth that give us day and night, and the seasons and the mysterious cosmic rays that forever bombard us. The fathomless depths of space, and the countless universes, that appears to be running away. The stories of the wonderful everyday things, take without a thought-commonplace to us, but mysterious in the same time, filled with the history of man’s achievements and disappointments. Great civilization rise, then vanish into time, all of life is like this. The old, middle aged, and young, living at the same time, and each one being an important part of the big family, that we call the human race. We can see that all of life and all of human history is a great tapestry woven of many threads. The same threads do not all reach the whole length of the tapestry, new ones are continually being drawn into the mesh and interwoven with the old to make an ever changing picture of the Time. Wars come and go, whole nations sometimes behave badly, just as some men and women give way to selfishness, greediness, but in the long run, all nations are made up of the people with the same hopes and ambitions.

Each Amazonian tribe has given something to the sum of beauty and knowledge, and we need to preserve this rich heritage. It is interesting to note, how much each tribe or country has been influenced, and molded by the geographical surrounding of the people and place, by the climate, and by the kind of plants, animals, and minerals that each contains. We are all, in a way, descended from the geniuses of the world, the more and longer we live, the more we cultivate own sense of beauty, the more shall we show the marks of own kindness’ and understanding and passion for others- less fortuned.

The rainforest and its people, all plants, and all animals to-day lies scattered about the world like flowers which bloom forever. We cannot think how bare our lives would be lacking these forest blossom flowers. This is to me, like whole tree does not grow only up. Part of the tree grows downwards, parts upwards, and each grows to the place where it can do the work. So, the tree are like humans –and this is true of nearly all plants, has two parts, one that lives on light, and one, that live in darkness. Neither part could live without the other, like the natives can’t live without the trees, and the land, like we already learned over the centuries from the history.

Pictures... Peru- Tamshiyacu village, Rainforest and Amazon River

Amahuaca Indians

Amahuaca is a place name, referring to the Capivara River in Brazil and in Puesto Varadero on the Peruvian-Brazilian border. They also use the names Yora (people) or Honi Kuin (real men),sometime known as Ipitineri. The Amahuaca believe that Indian peoples were first nonhuman animals. Their principal culture hero, Rantanga, is equated with the sun and regarded as the source of fire, cultivated plants, and stone axes, as well as the creator of animals. Themes of Amahuaca myths include floods, earthquake, holocaust, an arrow-cane ladder to the sky, ancestral twins, the sun and moon.Eclipses warn of the imminent arrival of cannibalistic spirits. A deformed baby is thought to be sired by an incubus spirit. The universe is inhabited by a host of spirits (yoshin) that are feared but can be manipulated. The most dangerous animal spirits are those of predators. Angry spirits of the dead ancestors can kill the living.

Ceremonies begin about the age of 3 years, a youngster's ears and nasal septum are pierced for ornaments. Adolescent boys are expected to participate in an ordeal of wasp stings. To communicate with tutelary jaguar spirits or friendly ancestors, adult men drink a decoction of ayahuasca and chant throughout the night. Datura is smoked with tobacco for the same purpose.

A healer (hawaai) drinks ayahuasca vine. A childless woman who does not menstruate may eat sour seeds of a certain fruit. A virulent toxin secreted through the skin of a small frog calledkambóis rubbed into open wounds to bring visions, purge the body, and increase hunting skill. Infusions of aromatic plants are rubbed on the skin to increase hunting success by camouflaging body odor. Individuals use chants and many kinds of fruits, seeds, leaves, and roots to treat their own illnesses, as well as to make them irresistible to a desired mate or repel an unwanted spouse. Scratching the caudal scales of a boa constrictor is thought to lessen the pain of stings by large black ants in the gardens.

The body of a deceased person is buried temporarily in the house floor and then cremated after relatives arrive from other communities. The ashes are reburied and charcoal from the funeral pyre is thrown into the river. Fragments of charred bones and teeth are ground, mixed with soup, and consumed by the closest relative. To remove all reminders of the deceased and discourage the spirit from lingering, personal possessions are burned or broken, including garden crops and the house built by the deceased. Spirits of dead relatives are thought to fly to a place in the sky near the sun, where hunting is easy and they visit with others who have preceded them.

The Aguaruna tribe known for centuries as “the river people” and dwell in the region of Northern Peru, close to the border with Ecuador- known as Jibaro (Jivaro). Ethnonyms: Awajun, Aguahun, Aents, Aguajun, Awaruna, Ahuahun. The villages are semi permanent. The old style oval house has been largely replaced by smaller rectangular houses. Traditionally, they were mostly hunting and fishing, over the last few decades they have become engaged in market activities and horticulture.

They traditionally believed in many spirits and mythological figures, among them: Etsa, or the Sun; Nugkui, or mother earth, who ensures agricultural success and provides the clay for ceramics;Tsugki, water spirits who live in the rivers; and Bikut, or father shaman, who transforms himself into hallucinogenic plants. Young men would traditionally take drugs includingayahuascato help them see visions. The visions were believed to be the souls of dead warriors, and if the young man showed no fear he would receive spirit power known asajútap. A man with such spirit power would be invulnerable in battle.

In the past, the Aguarunas engaged in the practice of shrinking human heads to make tzantza.

Believe- The body is of earth; the souls of the four elements, but derives through the stars. There are two kinds of death- that which results from the destruction of vital physical organs by disease or injury, and results from the destruction of the sensitive soul by astral influences. All diseases deriving from the planets, and from the natural corruption of the earth, and universe.

Aquaruna headdressHouse

The Aguaruna tribe of Peru live in dispersed settlement elevations of 300- 1000meters. They intristingly support themselves through horticulture, and they have become involved in snake farming, to sell their venoms for biomedical application. They have a large snake farms in an village at Rio Cenepa, surrounded by a wire mesh fence that is six ft. high.The interesting system of farming allows a large quantity of Bushmaster snake venom to be exctracted without destroying natural resources. The drug discovery from venom research is captopril- lowering blood pressure.

Bushmaster snake Aquaruna tribe

THE ARAWETE

The Arawete are a Tupi-Guarani people who live in the Southern region of the state of Para, on the banks of Igarape Ipixuna, tributary to the middle Xingu River. They claim to live on the edge of the earth, they are a mystical people, dead are remembered in details, and the memory of the living is extensive.

They live in conjugal houses of close relatives. Hunting is the focus of intense cultural investment. They hunt a variety of animals. Honey from bees is main products and are classify into at least forty categories-edible or not.

Arawete village & girl

THE ASHANINKA

The Ashaninka are an ethnic group of the Peruvian rainforest, also known by the name Campa. The Asháninka language belongs to the pre-Andean Arawak language. Difficult access to the region allowed the inhabitants to remain isolated from outside influences.The houses are built of wood and palm trees native to the region.The platform is fixed with plates, where there lie all the members of the family.The houses are built on the bank of the river or creek, which are supplied with water and provides them with fishing.

The Ashaninka vision of the cosmos is mainly mystical without a figure of a creator, but they believe in hero Avireri, who transformed humans into animals, plants or invisible beings.

The Moon and the Sun are good spirits. The Festival of the Moon is a celebration of the god Kashíri. According to legend, he is the father of the Sun. Kashíri appeared to a young girl and introduced her and her people to manioc (cassava). He made the young girl his wife, and in giving birth to the Sun she was burned to death. Kashíri began taking his nephews to the forest, where he slaughtered and ate them. When his brother-in-law threatened to kill him, he escaped by rising into the sky. Kashíri continues eating human souls and that explains why the Moon gets fatter every month.When girls reach adolescence, they spend up to six months in isolation. During that time they spin thread. Afterward they are welcomed back to daily life with a wild celebration.

Ashaninka

After death a human soul can join the good spirits if the person was sufficiently good in his or her lifetime. However, the Asháninka consider it far more likely that the soul will become an evil ghost. In that case, it will revisit the settlement and attack those living there. That was the reason why, traditionally, the Asháninka would often abandon a settlement after someone died.

THE APINAJE

The Apinaje (also Apinale, Apinaye) are an indigenous people of Brazil, living in the state of Tocantins. Theirs language is Apinaje also Portuguese. They raise cattle, pigs and chickens. Common crops include beans, bananas, papayas, sweet potatoes, watermelons, yams and more.

They regard the Sun as creator and father of men. Mythology also emphasizes the "humanity" of the animals, given that "before, all the animals could talk", as they say; the animals are seen as ex-humans. They view the spirits of dead humans (carõ) undergo a series of metamorphoses, involving the use of the bodies of animals and plants as avatar, and in a regressive manner (from the higher mammals to the insects; from cultivated plants to "rotten wood", to finally be transformed into stone, thus no longer being able to communicate with the living). Besides revealing the Timbira view of the hierarchy implicit in the natural order, these metamorphoses indicate that, under the skin of a natural entity, the carõ can establish contact with humans, a contact that is always dangerous (it can lead to sickness and death) and which provides the subject who is contacted (if he accepts the terms "offered" by the carõ) the possibility of becoming a shaman (wajaka), thereby acquiring the power to maintain a permanent line of communication with the "other side" and the power to cure.

Besides that, the natural world is peopled by "guardian spirits" of the species. The "spirit guardians" communicate with the humans in dreams or in the liminal states that a subject passes through (sickness), sending messages about the state of his "herd".

Six large Indian nations are to be found in Tocantins: the Karaja, the Apinajé, the Krahô, the Xerente, the Xambiao and the Javae

Unfortunately, the cultural dissemination is to me is like stolen generation. Australian Aboriginal experience and world history shows, that cultural diversity should not be aggressively assimilated like we can see in many places in Amazon area. Assimilation into majority societies has been a short-term disaster, followed by long-term, ended with chronic catastrophe.

The uncontacted tribe photos(Cabellos Largos, and the others) were released to pressure and influenced the Peruvian government, to actively defend the isolated tribes. The newly released pictures, which were taken by Brazil’s Indian Affairs Department was necessary, to prove the logging was going on- and specially to protect the native groups, because the industry will destroy this tribes. If the world and governments look the other way, the Indians will quickly be gone by greedy force, or even try to convert them into westerner’s religion. We are witnesses of the disappearance of their languages, and the eradication of isolated groups which are watched from a distance.A detail study show, that is not such tribe uncontacted, which might easily be understood as never-been-contacted or undiscovered tribe, because governments of Brazil and Peru watching them from distance , nearly for twenty years. The isolated people will be better off if we embrace them, so that they can make their choices about their future.

The Apurinã

The Apurina (Ipurina) scattered over Purus River from Rio Branco to Manaus Brazil –Ethnic population 4 087. Currently they are spread over 23 indigenous territories. The Tribe possesses a rich cosmological and ritual universe, joint departure from the sacred land. The proper form of marriage is between two nations Xoaporuneru and a Metumanetu, single marriage within the same nation-among siblings. In the Boca do Acre region Apurina are divided into four sub-groups; Xoaporuneru, Metumanetu, Kowaruneru and Kaikuruwakoru.

Houses are built around the same cleared space, a dispersed set of dwellings or combination of these. Today the house (barraca) follows the same design as those rubber tappers, raised on wooden stilts. Old house (malocas) had one entrance for men and another for women. The subsistence gardens - which belong to the women - are cleared in the galley forests or sloping land more or less distant from the villages, which are always located near small streams and on high spots, with a good view, preferably on the "plateau" (põpej) - on which the vegetation of the cerrado (srictu sensu) predominates.

The men are responsible for the "broca" (pruning of the bushy vegetation), the felling of the trees and the planting of rice; the women participate in the sowing of the corn, manioc and other crops (broad beans, yams, beans, sweet potato, pumpkin, watermelon, peanuts, papaya, and bananas).

Besides fishing with hook and line, they practice the "tinguizada", collective fishing expeditions done in the dry season in small streams with the use of plant poison, or tingui (a toxic plant that cuts the supply of oxygen in the water making the fish appear "drunk").

The Apurinã parties that receive the generic name of Xingan (in Apurinã kenuru ), ranging from small to large nocturnal singing events, with invitations to many villages, plentiful food, wine, cassava, banana and patauá. On some occasions are made ​​parties to calm the shadow of a dead man, in sequence and in the years following the death.

The Xingan starts as a ritual confrontation. The guests arrive armed, painted and decorated in the woods.

The Shaman spend months in the forest, fasting, or eating very little and chewingkatsowaru . He also avoid sexual intercourse. When the shaman receives a stone, he introduces him into the body and thus will introduce all the stones that he receives.

A shaman healing- using katsoparu , leaf chewing and awire snuff. The shaman has its own katsoparu and awire. The shaman must chew katsoparu and drink lots of snuff. Sometimes the cure is done in private, in the patient's home. Often, the rock shows and explains what the disease and the patient acquired it and what to do. Explains that action or spell is a creature of the forest .He introduces the stone in the body and can then recommend remedies or treatments.

They believe that one of the most common problems are the animals that pull , carry with them the spirit of children. There are a number of foods that both parents should avoid when the child is still small - until it has about two years. The main fish and game are large, but also beans, rum, coconut, pineapple, katsoparu , mango.

The Apurinã shamans work with dreams. Other spirits guide the shaman: the animals, or heads of animals ( hãwite ) with whom he works . Each shaman has his or her: jaguar, snake, mapinguari .

The shamans visit various lands, down the river, even the sky, where is Tsora, the creator of all there is on Earth. Tsora is the son of Yakonero.

houseApurinã

The Amahuaca people

The Amahuaca or Amhuaca (better known as a Shipibo or Conibo) are a Native South American people of the Peruvian and BrazilianAmazonia. They have a Tropical Forest type of culture. They practice slash-and- burn cultivation. They are farmers, hunters and gatherers, they speak a Panaon language and reputedly practiced endocannibalism- the ritual cannibalism of deceased relatives. In 1998 they numbered about 520. A typical settlement consists of three or four one-family houses, with about 15 people altogether.

The Amahuaca believe that Indian peoples were first nonhuman animals and that they themselves originated from a xopaan, the gourd like fruit of a begonia. Their principal culture hero, Rantanga, is equated with the sun and regarded as the source of fire, as well as the creator of animals.

The universe is inhabited by a host of spirits ( yoshin ) that are feared but can be manipulated. The word yoshin means not only spirits, but also reflection and shadow. The most dangerous animal spirits are those of predators. Celestial bodies, including aurora borealis, are spirits of people who once lived on earth. Angry spirits of the dead ancestors can kill the living with epidemic diseases. The spirits are all associated with number of animals and plants.

The body of a deceased person is buried temporarily in the house floor and then cremated after relatives arrive from other communities. The ashes are reburied and charcoal from the funeral pyre is thrown into the river. Fragments of charred bones and teeth are ground, mixed with soup, and consumed by the closest relative. To remove all reminders of the deceased and discourage the spirit from lingering, personal possessions are burned or broken, including garden crops and the house built by the deceased. Spirits of dead relatives are thought to fly to a place in the sky near the sun, where hunting is easy.

The Bakairi

The Bakairi (950 people) call themselves Kura, which means people-human beings. Theirs language belongs to the Karib family.They reside in Mato Grosso, a central Brazilian state and Santana (35,479 hectares).The land is almost entirely located in the municipality of Paranatinga. Indians inhabit a reservation located on the banks of the Paranatinga River, and small group (Sawapa) at Planalto da Serra.

The residential units are arranged in a linear fashion, forming streets. In a center, or to the side is leader’s house, where they hold meetings and rituals. Theirs art express in all artifacts refer to the spirit world. In theirs daily life one can observe various rituals- (marriage, sickness, first menstruation and death and so on).Besides these, there is a complex of sacred and pan-community rites, called kado, the scheduling of which is concentrated in the dry season. Among these there is the Anji Itabienly, the "Baptizing of the Corn", which marks the beginning of the Bakairi year and the cycle of the ekuru. It is held at the time of the first harvest of corn- in January or February. In the middle of April, when the season of the waters ends, the great rites are held when they utilize ritual masks - the Kápa and the Iakuigâde – but never simultaneously. The ritual masks are kept in the kadoêti. There are 23 ritual masks, each representing the tutelary spirit of a species of fish, aquatic animal, and riverine birds, and contribute and enduring traditions. Sacred masks "Yakuigade" - This ritual involves all the Bakairi people. The principle participant is the "Page" or Shaman who is responsible for calling the Spirits and inviting them into the masks to participate in the ritual. Finally, there is, from time to time, the sadyry, ear-piercing ritual for adolescents of the male sex.

The men carve and paint large ritual masks. The women sew palm costumes worn with the masks. Chants used when wearing the masks are handed down from generation to generation.

The rites of the kado constitute a tribute to the dead, who control the natural cycles, including the seasons of the year and of the ekuru, vital substance.. The ritual represents the happiness, sadness and reunion of the Spirit Universe of the Bakairi.

The Bakairi believe in spirits that populate the natural world. They also believe in twin culture heroes who are identified with the sun and the moon.

When a death occurs, villagers visit the home of the deceased and cry and wail. The corpse is then wrapped in his or her hammock and buried a short distance from the village. The grave is not marked, and it is not visited afterward.

. Two types of illness are recognized: those attributable to contact with non-Indians and those resulting from sorcery.

The Bakairi

Assurini Indians

Other Names: Asurini, Asurinikin, Surini, Awaeté

The word Assurini means "Red People".Presently, the population is comprised of 33 women, 18 men, and 55 young men and children, totaling 106 individuals. All the Asurini do Tocantins at present live on a reservation on the lower Tocantins River near the town of Tucurui in Pará State. The language belongs to the Tupi-Guarani.

There are different types of housing, and the most common, where the different domestic groups with the mud walls, wood structure and straw. The largest house in the village ( Aketi , tavywa ), measuring approximately 30m long, 12m wide and 7m high. Hunting , fishing and gardening is the main activity of the tribe. They cultivate manioc, corn which is the principal product, also tobacco, cotton, peanuts, bean, bananas and watermelon. Collective fishing is important for them as they love pets and different forest animals.

The Asurini celebrate two kinds of ceremonials. One takes place after planting and involves dancing, playing flutes, wearing feather headdresses, and eating manioc porridge. The other is a festival associated with the initiation of a new shaman. Among the tribe, shamanistic rituals, known as "pajelança", are performed frequently, mobilizing the whole group. The majority of the men participate as pajé in these rituals, helped by assistants and by the women singers, who also have the task of preparing ritual porridge. "Pajelança" (shamanism) includes two types of rituals: the maraká (song and dance) and the petymwo (massage and smoke treatment), executed in order to invoke the spirits. The guardian spirits mediate between the shamans and the unique categories, as the shamans between the spirits. In accordance with the existing hierarchy between spirits of the Asurini cosmos, humans are subordinate to the creatures classified as unique categories; a superior plane, as well as the anhynga, who are of an inferior plane and who live with the Asurini, and can cause harm to them, for they represent negative forces, like the souls of the dead. The "witchcraft" includes two types of rituals: the Marak (singing and dancing) and petymwo (massage and fumigation), performed to invoke the spirits with which shamans come in contact, as well as to take the cause of the illness of the body (patient) and give the "remedy" ( muynga ) they receive, then across the state of trance. In these rituals, the "shaman" is also for the patient and the children of the village ynga , something like "life force"."The Asurini shaman (pay’e) ... can invoke ... spirits ... or be possessed by them. In possession, the shaman becomes the spirit he has been calling, behaves like it, speaks it words with its voice.

"The shaman’s gourd rattle (yap’u); cigars (pet’imu), wrapped in the thin bark of the tauari tree, ... and ... the shaman’s whistles : the yaw’ara ..., made of a hollow nut in which three holes have been drilled, and a small two-tubed panpipe." "The shaman’s songs are accompanied by the rhythmic beat of his ritual gourd rattle. ... After several songs the shaman may start dancing, his assistant behind him or to his side repeating the shaman’s words. A group of young women and girls may join them in the dance, always to their left, interlacing their arms over each other’s shoulders and those of the shaman. ... Between songs --- ... calls to the spirits ... – the shaman may go to the ritual structure and grasp for an invisible "substance" above the double log".

The Asurini make music (picture) with panpipes, short bamboo flutes, and the great flutes. The latter may be 1 to 3 meters long, and on them they play different melodies, each of which has a name such as "fire music," "tapir," or "parrot and many other forest animals.

The Boras of the Amazon live in Peru, Colombia and Brazil, with approximately 1000 Boras Indians living in Colombia. They have divided themselves into different clans, in which each clan represented by a different animal. There are less than a dozen communities in the Ampiyacu basin comprising Bora, Witoto and Ocaina natives. The Witotoan languages are spoken.

One of the primary tourist attractions in Iquitos Peru is the Bora Indians who live near San Andrés Village on the Nanay River. Many tourists visit them and see them dance with the snakes, but few get to really know the Boras and their culture. Who are these indigenous people and how did they come to live near Iquitos? Originally, the Bora Indians are not from Peru. The Bora ancestral homeland is in reality north of the Putumayo River in what is now Colombia.

The Bora work in large communal houses called Malocas, or Meeting house, where they introduce theirs tradition to tourists, no everybody like to be exposed to the public. Four dances are introduced-..Welcome dance, toro, eager and anaconda dance. The village, where they live is very close- nearby Maloca. Theirs living is shaped as an octagon and has three openings. It is said to be the representation of the universe. According to the chief, the family structure is an extended. A house is made of wooden poles, roofed in palm fronds or thatch, and set upon the rain forest floor. The basic family unit is called a “curaca”; it consists of one man and several wives with their children.

. In Bora mythology, the rainbow represents danger, bringing rain, cold and sickness. This Bora warrior fights a rainbow-hued monster with his blowgun, as still used by Boras for hunting in the forest. There is no distinction between the physical and spiritual worlds and spirits are present throughout the world. Bora families practice exogamy.

Ocaina is spoken by 54 people in northeastern Peru Yaguasyacu, Ampuyacu, and Putumayo Rivers, and by 12 more in the Amazonas region of Colombia.

Ocaina

The Baniwa tribe

The Baniwa live on the borders of Brazil with Colombia and Venezuela, in villages located on the banks of the Içana River and its tributaries the Cuiari, Aiari and Cubate, as well as in communities on the Upper Rio Negro/Guainía, and in the urban centers of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, Santa Isabel and Barcelos . The Kuripako, who speak a dialect of the Baniwa language and are kin of the Baniwa, live in Colombia and on the upper Içana (Brazil). Both groups are highly skilled in the manufacture of arumã (aririte) basketry, an age-old art.

Like their neighbors on the Uaupés River, the Baniwa presently live on the banks of the main rivers, but they say that their ancestors did not live so close to the rivers and built their malocas (longhouses) generally at the headwaters of the main feeder streams. They call themselves Walimanai or Waferinaipe.

The tribe has been affected by the rubber industry and Missionaries to the point ,that life changed rapidly and was modernized and industrialized. Acculturation and assimilation have not meant a complete loss of ancient mythology. Their Creator Nápiruli (Iñápirrikúli) is a deity also honored by other Arawak groups of Southern Venezuela and Colombia. The Baniwa belief system has much in common with the Tsase, Warekena, Wakuénai, and Bare peoples. Still, their ancient religious belief system holds influence over the tribe. The basic activities include fishing and agriculture, hunting and fishing is traditional. Ritual and shamanism are mainly male activities. Traditionally, they are skilled in pottery and basket-making crafts. The girls are given away after they have been initiated, following their first menstruation. There is not a system of private property, all members have unlimited access to lands-collective ownership, only houses and gardens are private. Traditionally, houses were abandoned after the death. Marriages are arranged by the parents of the bride and groom. The wife comes and lives with the family of the husband.

The Boniwa people tend to live in small village settlements along the rivers (10-150 people). They have specialized Shamans 1…Chant leaders (malikai-iminali) and 2…. Pajes (maliiri) ,who have an extensive knowledge of medicinal plants. The tribe performs a variety of ritual dances called pudali. The ritual is celebrated in three phases: in the first, called wakapethakan, or "we whip", the “owner of the ritual” (who is responsible for the organization of all the preparations and is the owner of the house where the ritual will take place) sends the men to the forest to gather fruits and orders the women to make manioc beer, caxiri. When all is ready, on the appointed day, the men go down to the port where the sacred flutes and trumpets are hidden, paint themselves black with carbon, and wait for the calling.Baniwa religious life was traditionally based on the great mythological and ritual cycles related to the first ancestors and symbolized by the sacred flutes and trumpets, on the central importance of shamanism (pajés and chanters, or chant-owners) and on a rich variety of dance rituals, called pudali, associated with the seasonal cycles and the maturation of forest fruits.

In Baniwa cosmology, the universe is formed by multiple layers, associated with various divinities, spirits, and “other people." According to the drawing made by a Hohodene pajé, the cosmos basically consists of four levels: Wapinakwa ("the place of our bones"), Hekwapi ("this world"), Apakwa Hekwapi ("the other world") e Apakwa Eenu ("the sky of the other world").

The time of the beginning of the world is remembered in a complex set of numerous myths the main protagonist of which is Nhiãperikuli, beginning with the appearance of the primordial world and ending with his creation of the first ancestors, Nhiãperikuli’s ("They inside the bone"). withdrawal from the world. More than any other figure of the Baniwa pantheon, Nhiãperikuli was responsible for the form and essence of the world, for which reason he may be considered the Supreme Being of Baniwa religion.

Baniwa

The Candoshi Indians

Candoshi, also known as Murato, is an indigenous language of South America, spoken by 3000 people in Peru.

Some linguists have suggested a remote relationship is the the Jivarovan language. Natives are saying, that the houses should be at least a five-minute walk apart with gardens between. The traditional house is an oblong structure with a palm leafed roof, without walls. They live on tributaries of the Río Pastaza, the Chapara on tributaries of the Río Morona. The Candoshi live in extended-family settlements of approximately 150 people, but the average home is approximately 30 square meters. Modern homes have a bark wall around the sleeping area.

About 20 percent of the men now have two wives. Sister-exchange is the preferred marriage arrangement. A man without a sister is required to work for his father-in-law for several years after the marriage. Once the bride's father has agreed to the marriage, the couple are counseled by both fathers and by the mother of the bride; this constitutes the wedding ceremony. The hours before dawn are used for talking among the family and for telling the children stories of their ancestors. The penalty for killing a man, within the community, is still death.

They believed in one Supreme Being, Apanchi, the genesis of all that exists. Evil spirits, yashigo, cause death, but their power can be manipulated to one's advantage (specifically for the power to kill and for protection in war) and shamans invoke them for healing. In the beginning Apanchi lived with people, but they continually disobeyed him, so he went back to the sky. Traditionally, times of peace and plenty were attributed to the help of Apanchi, and when the people were suffering, Apanchi was said to be punishing them. The yashigo cause all sickness and death by capturing human spirits. A shaman can attempt to retrieve the spirit, but if he fails the person will die. Some yashigo live in trees, some travel in the wind. They occasionally appear as phantoms, and anyone who sees a phantom yashigo will die.

Death was caused by evil spirits, either indirectly (by murder) or directly (by sickness). The cause and effect of disease is now somewhat understood but not necessarily accepted. Traditionally, the ideal state after death was to reach the place of Apanchi in the sky.

The spirit of a sick person may be caught up by the spirits of the storm and carried along by them forever. This is the death that is feared most. Other spirits of the dead wander aimlessly in the forest. The bodies of the dead are put in canoes and dried on scaffolding over a fire. They are then put in the rafters of a vacant house, not to be buried until two or more years have passed.

Candoshi

The Tairona-Kogi Indians

The Tairona-Kogi (Tayrona) were a pre-Columbian civilization in the region of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in the present-day; Magdalena and La Guajira Departments of Colombia, South America which goes back to the 1st century AD, and showed documented growth around in the 11th century. They are descendants of an ancient South American civilization called the Tayrona.

The Tairona people formed one of the two principal groups of the Chibcha. The Tairona people formed one of the two principal linguistic groups of the Chibcha family, the other being the Muisca.

Concealed in the harsh mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta of northern Colombia, live the indigenous Kogi Indians. It is these mountains the Kogi have occupied since the first century.

The tribes known as ‘Los Kogui’ are today's custodians of the Tairona culture. They have a population of approximately 12,000 people. The Kogi plant crops and live off the land.They marry in their culture.The Kogi constantly move about from place to place. The Kogi believe the Sierra Nevada to be the 'Place of Creation' and the 'Heart of the World'. They call themselves the Elder Brothers of humanity and consider their mission to care for planet. They understand how the planet works as an integrated unit rather than the separation of all things in our worlds.They believe themselves to be the custodians of the planet Earth here to keep things in balance. They created a parallel world where life could continue to grow, a world where the dead could become alive.Shaman are called Mamas Kogi Mamas are chosen from birth and spend the first nine years of childhood in a cave in total darkness learning the ancient secrets of the spiritual world or Aluna. They are the priests and judges who control Kogi society.The coca plant is an integral part of the Kogi way of life, deeply involved with their traditions, religion, work and medicine.

Kogi womencoca shrub Kogi Meditating

They worry about the destruction of the rain forest as well as the planet itself.Some say they have moved beyond verbal language, using tones to create colorful images in their minds rather than thoughts expressed as sentences. Some Kogi speak telepathically to each other.

ThePirahã tribe

Deep in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, there are no cities or roads. The only way to get in is by boat or with a special kind of airplane. The Piraha (pronounced pee-da-HAN) are an indigenous hunter-gatherer tribe of Amazonian Indians in Brazil who mainly live on the banks of the Maici River. Currently, number of people declaned to 200 and the culture is in danger of extinction. The Piraha people do not call themselves pirahas but instead the Hi'aiti'ihi', roughly translated as 'the straight ones'.

The Piraha take short naps of 15 minutes to two hours through the day and night, and rarely sleep through the night. They often go hungry, not for want of food, but from a desire to betigisai- "hard".Not everyone in the world views the concept of time in the same way.Piraha is unrelated to any known living language. It has only a small number of consonants and vowels but a rich repertoire of tones and stresses that give it a lilting singsong quality. In fact, it's often crooned, whistled and even hummed. None of them know how to write.One of the most important values in Pirahã culture is immediacy of experience. If you look at their stories, they don’t talk about things to come. They might talk about what they’re going to do tomorrow base on the things they’re doing today. They don’t talk about the distant future. They don’t talk about the distant past. All of their stories and all of their songs have to do with what they did today, what they saw today. They don’t make a big distinction between dreaming and regular experience.

Pirahã

The Bororo

The Bororo call themselves Boe. The term Bororo means “village court”. Along the years, other names were used to identify this tribe, such as: Coxipone, Araes, Araripocone, Cuiaba, Coroados, Porrudos and Bororos da Campanha. Traditionally, the territory of Bororo reached Bolivia, state of Goias, Xingu River and the vicinity of the Miranda River. The Eastern tribe commonly known as Coroados, rimanded isolated until mid-19th Century. Today they have six demarcated Lands in the state of Mato Grosso- Brazil. They speak a Ge language. The Bororo unit is the village (Boe Ewa) formed by a group of houses built on a circle with the men’s house (Baito) at the center. Around the village circle, each clan occupies a specific place. The traditional economy was based on hunting, fishing and horticulture. Traditionally, there were two achievable statuses- shaman and headman. Leadership was achieved on the basis of knowledge. Funeral is the longest of the bororo rituals. When a person dies the soul (aroe) moves into the body of certain animals, such as the jaguar. The deceased body is wrapped in a straw mats and buried in a shallow grave. Each day the grave is watered in order to accelerate the decomposition of the body, in the end of the process adorned. Three month later he/she is buried for good. A man is chosen to represent the deceased. Adorned all over, his body is completely covered with feathers and paintings. A man who dances introduces new soul with his movements, presenting itself to the world of the living.

Bororo village

Bororo

The Kayapos Indians

The Kayapos ( Kayapó) are located in Xingú Park, Mato Grosso, and southern Pará. The Kayapó live in villages dispersed along the upper course of the Iriri, Bacajá and Fresco rivers, as well as affluent of the voluminous Xingu River in Central Brazil. Alternative Names are Xikrin, Txhukahamai, Mebêngokrê. The Kayapo are a Gê- Macro-Jê, Jê,speaking tribe.They live in thatched-roof huts without room divisions. The thatch for the roofs is made of palm leaves.Kayapo fields and villages are built in a circle to reflect the Kayapo belief in a round universe.

The flamboyant headdress with feathers radiating outward represents the universe-picture. Its shaft is a symbol for the cotton rope by which the first Kayapo, it is said, descended from the sky.

They believe their ancestors learned how to live communally from social insects such as bees. This is why mothers and children paint each other's bodies with patterns that look like animal or insect markings, including those of bees.

They also believe that at death a person goes to the village of the dead, where people sleep during the day and hunt at night. Over there, old people become younger and children become older.

The new (names) ceremonies are held in each dry or rainy season. Other seasonal rites include special dances or ceremonies related to the crops they grow. The Kayapó consider themselves an integral part of the world and circular universe; they see the process of life and the universe as a cyclical one. . The center of the world is represented by the village's central place, where ritual and public life take place. The symbol of the center of the world and the universe is the rattle, in the form of a head.The majority of Xikrin cultural items, stories, names, were brought from nature to society by the shaman.

The Kayapó believe that illness and death is caused by a loss of mekaron (a kind of spirit or double in the person's image) or by the attack of a forest animal's mekaron , which is believed to be on its way to the village of the dead, located on tribal land, near a mountain range. There the mekaron continues to live a life similar to that of those in the village of the living. The body of the deceased is buried in a cemetery, and after some time the bones are retrieved, washed, painted with urucú, and submitted to secondary burial.

Kayapos Indians

The Yahua Indians

The Yahua (Yagua) Indians are a widely-distributed indigenous tribe, who live mainly in the western Amazon basin in the Department of Loreto near Iquitos, Perú. The Yagua means "red" and comes from the tribe's practice of body-painting with extract from the pod of Achiote (Bixa orellana). The Yagua communities are also in Colombia and on the Yavarí River. Traditional male Yahua dress consists of skirts made of aguaje palm fiber. The women typically wear skirts of red cotton cloth.The Yaguas speak their own and very difficult language. Traditionally, house consisted of one large, oval, beehive-shaped communal house inhabited by several related families.

The ancient knowledge of making the curare mixture has been passed down, generation to generation, by Yagua shamans. Yagua shamans really are masters when it comes to making curare. The curare vine,Chondrodendron tomentosumis only one of the many ingredients typically used to make curare.

. The Yagua believe in supernatural forces animating all manifestations of nature. The Yagua consider a small number of mythical beings or mythical ancestors to be Supreme Beings who created the world. These beings are surrounded by numerous spirits animating the visible and invisible worlds and residing in the forest, in the water, and on earth as well as on different levels of the heavens and underworlds. These spirits are considered benevolent (hunting spirits), malevolent (stars), or both, according to specific circumstances. Disease is thought to be caused by spiritual malevolence brought on by violating taboos and by sorcery. Curing techniques consist of extracting the foreign "element" by sucking it out and blowing tobacco smoke over the patient.

Death is ascribed to the same origins as disease. Formerly, the corpse was buried in the center of the communal house, whereupon the house was burned down and the site abandoned. Dying means that the different souls that resided in different parts of the body travel to their respective levels in the mythological universe.

Yahua Indians

The Yine Indians

The Yine is an Arawakan language of South America, spoken by 4000 people in Peru. Belong to the Arawak linguistic family Pre-Andino. Yine indigenous communities on the shores of Alto Madre de Dios are approximately distance from between ( Boca Manu half an hour, and two - four hours from Shintuya). "Yine" itself means people. Yine are (Also known as: Piro, Pirro, Pira, Simirinche, Simiranch, Contaquiro)

Formerly referred to as Piro, it belongs to the Piro group, which also includes Inapari, Kanamare,and Apurina.

One of the Yine beliefs is in reincarnation, though many things a human spirit can only come back in the form of a jaguar, deer or tapir. Animals are interwoven with their culture, although shamanism and contact with “the other world” has been weakened by the influence of missionaries, we were told.

The Yine Indians are located: Peru, Departments of Ucayali and Cusco, East Central Urubamba River area; Department of Ucayali and Loreto, along the Ucayali River (Conatmana and Pucallpa); Department of Madre de Dios, Madre de Dios River. The settlement pattern is linear- mixed along the river. Houses are built of wood and roofing material is from - pona palm.

Ethnic communities

Husband

%

Wife

%

Yine

84

Yine

84

Yine

2

Machiguenga

2

Yine

1

Quechua

1

Quechua

4

Yine

4

Machiguenga

5

Yine

5

Amarakaeri

5

Yine

5

Machiguenga

2

Machiguenga

2

Mestizo

2

Yine

2

Illness is, in most cases, believed to be a result of a conflict between the human world and the spiritual world, where illness is understand to be a malignant spirit who has entered the body of individual person.

Knowledge of herbal medicine requires long-term commitment, because there is believe that all plants are living and have spirits, which each medicinal plant cures specific diseases. Shamans are greatly respected but also feared. Name for shaman is a “cajunchi”.

Yine girl

The Amuesha/Yanesha

Yanesha' (literally 'we the people'), also called Amuesha or Amoesha is a language spoken by the people of Peru in central and eastern Pasco Region, belonging to the Arawak linguistic family. The name "Amuesha" is derived perhaps from aamo (capybara) and -esha' (classificatory). Formerly, many of the group used it to refer to themselves, but today they prefer "Yanesha'" (we people).They are horticulturists. Crops include sweet manioc, plantains, sweet potatoes and a variety of other starchy roots, maize, and squash, as well as pineapple, papaya, and other fruits. Presently, the most recent census count puts their population at over 7 000 distributed among 48 communities located in Puerto Inca Province (Huanuco), Chanchamayo Province (Junin) and Oxapampa Province (Pasco). They speak Yanesha', a language belonging to the Maipurean language family that also includes Ashaninka, the Yine, etc.

The Yanesha are native Peruvian Indians who migrated from the Amazon Jungle to the Andean foothills. Their new territory lies between two of Peru’s prime coffee growing regions, Villa Rica and Oxapampa, where history is linked to the landscape.

They also help preserve significant pieces of Yánesha tradition. They conserved their history in stories, songs and places in the landscape. Songs “used to play a central role in the transmission of knowledge and power.

The Yanesha have long fought to recover access to their land and reclaim their territorial rights. Since the 1970s, they formed new communities and created the Federation of Native Communities. Today, there are some 1,400 Yanesha families living in 35 titled native communities located in three provinces of the Central Andean Amazon. A people of the Peruvian Andes believed that food was central to life itself. Peruvian mythological food origins are rooted in plants.

Disease is also believed to be caused by the spirits of the dead; Spirits in termite nests, the water, rocks, and so forth also cause illness. It is the duty of close relatives to burn the offending element to affect a cure. A shaman is often paid to keep the spirits of the deceased away so that the family does not lose everything and have to start over.

The spirit was believed to be taken to heaven after death, whereas the "shadow spirit" lingered around the dwelling. Traditionally, when an adult member of the family died, the house and fields were abandoned so there was almost nothing to inherit except a few seed ornaments.

Amuesha/yanesha

The Yaminawá

The Jamináwa live widely dispersed in the state of Acre in Brazil, in eastern Peru, and in northern Bolivia. Estimates of their population vary from 1,200 to 2,467. Some 359 live on the Chandless, Iaco and Acre rivers in western Brazil. Another 200 to 600 are located in Peru on the Curiuja and upper Purus rivers; on the Mapuya, Huacapishtea, and possibly other upper tributaries of the Juruá; and also possibly in the Manu Biosphere Reserve. A third group of 150 Jamináwa occupy part of the Tahuamnu in Bolivia. The Jamináwa speak a Panoan language.The traditional Yaminahua territory was around the source of the River Jurua, from where they moved towards the source of the River Purus in Peru and Brazil.“The Yaminawá villages are an aggregate of small houses, each of which could include an “elder" with his daughters and their husbands, or two “elder” brothers-in-law whose children have married amongst themselves, or a group of brothers with their families.

The set of family houses – dwellings built on piles over the banks of the rivers. The chief of the group could nucleate a larger settlement.

Believe: “The shedipawo have three typical scenarios: the bottom of the rivers, the closed forest and the sky. The Yaminawá sky is always a place of deception: human beings get lost on the way to it, the attempts to establish contact with its inhabitants end up in failure. The forest is the place of war and metamorphoses: beings exchange their identities, devour each other and marry amongst themselves; under each visible form there is a “spirit" (nhusi, yoshi) capable of transmigrations. The world of the rivers participates in this same panorama, but the Yaminawá view it with great expectancy: there are the great water snakes, the Ronoá, who offer to the men their riches: iron, merchandise and vine ayahuasca.”

Yaminawá

The Urarina tribe

Are Isolated Amazonian people. The Urarina of the Peruvian Amazon are one group still struggling with increasing threats to their physical survival as a people. The Urarina are an indigenous people of the Peruvian Loreto who inhabit the Chambira, Urituyacu, and Corrientes Rivers. They refer to themselves as Kachá (lit. "person"), Urarina is thus rendered in Quechua as uray-runa or people from below or downstream people. They are semi-mobile, hunting and horticultural society whose population is estimated to be around 2,000. Urarina settlements are composed of multiple longhouse groups, located on high ground (restingas) or embankments along the flood-free margins.

The Urarina have lived in the Chambira and Urituyacu river basins for at least half a millennium. The word “Urarina” is thought to be derived from the Quechua root words of “people” and “below”—meaning the “people from below.” They call themselves “Kachá,” meaning “the people.”

River traders, loggers, and colonists coming from Iquitos to exploit the Urarina and their land for natural resources are known to have transported two measles epidemics in the late 1980s and 1991. They certainly brought the cholera epidemic of September 1991 and October 1993 upriver from Iquitos, as well as fever and different strains of gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases to which the Urarina have had no previous immunological exposure.

When someone dies they bury them the following day. The grave has a small table built over the body. If it is a woman then her sleeping pad and favorite pots and pans are laid there. If it is a man then his blowgun and machete laid there. Then, they will build a roof over it, put out a bowl of water or (Ayahuasca vine - shaman) and build a small fire at the head of the deceased. The belief is that the first night they will leave the grave then warm themselves, have a drink of water and rise to the heavens. After the roof falls in, then they move the water bowl close to head of the deceased as a grave marker. The Urarinas still dress way they did in the past, women with a red top and a black skirt, men with a collared shirt and pants or shorts.

The most famous ceremony practice by the tribe is called Kuarup or the Ceremony of the Dead. They are using tree trunk logs which symbolize the spirits of the dead, where feathers and paint are used. This event is an annual, and village acts as hosts for other tribes. Dance and different rituals are performed, like ritual of the flutes, where flute player is accompanied by a young girl with her eyes shut. Theirs songs are about the lives of the deceased and honor the dead. According to them; spirits of the deceased are present during the ceremony. After the ceremony of the dead decorated wood trunks are thrown into a river, which symbolize the journey of the spirits of the dead. Next colorful events are the Huka-Huka wrestling matches between the men.

Xingu ceremony

Xingu Art

The Vaurá Indians

They are located in Xingu Indigenous Park, in Mato Grosso State, Brazil, population 333 people. Also named - Waura , Wauja, Vaurá, Aurá. Maipure inhabit the area surrounding Piyulaga Lake, a name which may be translated as ‘place’ or ‘fishing camp,’ and which also supplies the name of the village. The lake is linked by a channel to the right shore of the lower Batovi river, in the western region of the basin formed by the effluents of the upper Xingu river, in the state of Mato Grosso. Language Root: Waura, Aruak family, Maipure group.

For them, music is always history, where their very distinctive pottery is an emblem of their ethnicity.

The Waura possess three main types of basket: mayapalu, mayaku and tirumakana. Men fashion baskets, and women make nets and pottery; the Waurá make pottery for their own use and for trade with the Trumai Indians.

Waurá villages are composed of several multifamily houses arranged around a central plaza.The disease manifests in serious condition is always through theft of the soul of a sick apapaatai. The role of the shaman is Wauja rescue her and reintroduce it in the patient's body, thus preventing his death as a result of permanent loss of the soul. The redemption of the soul of the patient is negotiated directly with the apapaatai. In life, there is a large and permanent presence of extra-human beings that goes back to the time, when animals were people and spoke.

Waura art and shaman

DEFORESTATION

The short-lived of economic booms of predatory logging and hunger for the forest still endangers isolated Indians communities. To understand the situation of the planet’s forest, we also have to understand what is driving the deforestation, which is the hunger for valuable wood red gold mahogany, specially the illegal wood, which becomes luxury goods. Illegal timber exports from the rainforest; especially distinctive hardwood is primary source of the valuable wood today. Tropical deforestation is a classic example of market failure. In the past three decades, hundreds of people have died in land wars; countless others endure fear and uncertainly, their lives threatened by those who profit from the illegal logging timber. Where is the end? The industrial-scale soybean producers are joining loggers and cattle ranchers in the land grab, speeding up destruction and further fragmenting the Amazonian wilderness. Close to twenty percent of the Amazon rainforest has been cut down; more than all the years since European colonization began. The land sharks follow the roads deep into impenetrable forest, where clear-cuts cause erosion with no intention of establishing a future stand of trees. Many Indian tribes are calling for a moratorium, claiming that cutting wood and drilling has caused environmental damage and poses health risks, which is noticeable all over the world. Even drinking water is contaminated which has led to increased risks of deceases. The rainforest is being destroyed at an annual rate of approximately 2.6%. If this destruction rate continues, the forest cover will be gone in forty years which is really scary situation, if you think about it. Latin America already provides more oil to USA than the Middle East does. Plans for new oil and gas fields are speeding ahead, pushed by hungry developer’s, countries, like China and many others. For many indigenous leaders, opposition to big oil companies is colored by the destruction of the land, so when governments stars talking about of extending activities, people worry. We can see that future will be increasingly uncertain and conflict-ridden without some compromise and compensation for the Indians who live there. For now, the money goes to the big cities, but never goes to these communities. . The exploration for oil has created numerous environmental problems of all types in the Amazon region, where numerous mammals’ species are close of extinction. For instance, deforestation in the Oriente has threatened the extinction of many plants, and the pollution created by the oil exploration process has led to the deaths of numerous animals and people, the Indian`s culture has been jeopardized, I learned. Indian federations are fighting for their human rights and the land. Deforestation is a growing problem worldwide. Population had grown to astronomical numbers, this increased in the speed of deforestation and also the growing world demand for everything, including logging to feed the world’s ever increasing need for building materials and exotic woods. As petroleum prices have risen to record levels, the spiraling price of gasoline has become issue number one all over the world. So, as oil prices rise, so will pressure to drill here and drill now. What is going to happen next…………? Let me know what do you think?

The Indigenous Park of the Xingu covers the cultural area known as the Upper Xingu, which includes- : Aweti, Kalapalo, Kamaiurá, Kuikuro,Matipu,Nahukuá,Trumai, Wauja and Yawalapiti. The other ethnic groups who inhabit the Park – the Ikpeng, Kaiabi, Kisêdjê, Tapayuna and Yudja. –On the Upper Xingu, the villages are formed by communal houses arranged on an oval-shaped perimeter, around a central plaza of beaten ground. The center of the Plaza is also the place where the dead are buried, where the rituals are held. The houses are covered with sapé thatch.

Themyth is not only a collection of founding events which were lost in the dawn of time; myth constantly guides and justifies the present. In Mythology,the first human beings were carved out of wood by the demiurge, who also tried to bring them back to life; as he failed; irreversible death was then commemorated in the ceremony of the Kwarup, in which trunks of the same wood serve as symbol for the dead. The twins Sun and Moon, being the modelers. The ceremonies are strictly connected to the mythical universe.The primordial making of humans, according to upper Xingu mythology, was the work of a demiurge who gave life to wooden logs placed in a seclusion compartment, by blowing tobacco smoke over them. Thus were created the first women, among whom was the mother of the twins, Sun and Moon, archetypes and authors of present-day humanity.

The first festival of the dead was celebrated, which is the most important festival of the Upper Xingu and which thus consists of a re-enactment of the primordial creation. Thus, it is a ritual that ties together death and life; the girls who come out of seclusion are like the first humans, mothers of men. The wooden girls were transformed into people after being closed up in straw compartments.

Both the “owner of the village” and the “owners of the houses” have the privilege of a differential form of burial. In the case of the “common” inhabitants, the body is wrapped in a hammock, laid in a grave, later covered by a mat, and finally earth. For the chiefs, there are at least two types of burial. In one of them, the body is tied to a wooden frame similar to a ladder, and placed inside the grave in such a way as to be standing up, facing to the east; in the other type, two graves are dug, three meters distance from each other, and connected by a tunnel. In each grave, a post is placed. The body is placed in a hammock that goes through the tunnel and has its wrists tied to the posts. In both cases, a funeral chamber is made, for the openings of the graves are tamped with mats and ceramic bowls turned upside down, and then covered by earth.

Aweti

The Kayabi Indians

Other names: Kawaiwete, Kayabi, Caiabi, Kaiaby, Kajabi, Cajabi. The Kayabi language belongs to the Tupi-Guarani family. The majority of the Kayabi now live within the Xingu Indigenous Park in Mato Grosso state.The current population amounts to approximately 1,000 people. They initially maintained a settlement pattern characterized by dispersion into small family units.The Kayabi are a people with a strong agricultural tradition, which was maintained despite their migration to a new territory.Every individual possesses several names, which form a varied personal repertoire. Names are changed throughout life as the person enters new social categories or undergoes life-altering personal experiences.The Kayabi conceive the cosmos to be divided into various overlapping layers, inhabited by an infinite number of beings which we conventionally call supernatural. There are many types of such beings. There are the various 'animal chiefs,' the dangerous anyang and mama'e which steal human souls, the cultural heroes (demiurges) who taught the Kayabi everything that they know today, and the Ma'it gods, the great shamans of the sky.

Every human, as well as many animals, possesses an ai'an, a concept which we can roughly translate as 'soul.' Humans are not automatically endowed with an ai'an at birth. They receive it along with their name, which incorporates them into the society in which they live.

The Kayabi always had many shamans. Shamans are the intermediaries between the natural and supernatural world. Shamanic initiation is comprehended as a voyage undertaken as a result of a serious illness or accident, a liminal moment between the quotidian level of reality and the supernatural level.

The most important moment in their ritual life was celebration of Yawaci, a period in which various villages gathered together to hear warriors' songs. This ritual was associated with the death of an enemy, taking place after the smashing of his skull, which was the pretext for initiation of young warriors. Some groups tattooed for medicinal purposes or to ward away evil spirits; others etched designs into their bodies to show success in battle or to venerate or imitate the mythic cultural heroes of the past. Today, however, there are less than ten tribes that continue to wear or tattoo in South America including the Matis, Matses, Karajá, Ikpeng, and Kayabi. Traditionally, their most feared enemies were two tribes that also practiced tattooing and to some degree ritualistic cannibalism: After a Kayabi warrior had killed his enemy, he usually brought back the victim’s head to the village. It was suspended from a pole by cotton string and as the victor danced into the village and sang songs of victory he was also ornamented with body paint to symbolize his enemy: white paint represented an Apiaká foe; red and black paint represented enemies from other tribes. Afterwards, the head was impaled on a stake and placed in the ground for all to see. Later, the trophy head was boiled in a pot and the meat was consumed by Kayabi warriors and elders of the tribe to give them spiritual strength.

The Kalapalo live is in the northeastern Mato Grosso state called Upper Xingu Basin. This makes the Upper Xingu Basin linguistically diverse, but with many of the groups still sharing the same social and ideological features. The Kalapalo seek to establish the first of the two marriages, which is the arranged marriage on the basis of past relationships of kinship or affinity. The second form of marriage involves people who are lovers and takes place after the death or divorce of a spouse. The reason why arranged marriages are important is because the create alliances between persons who have prior kinship connections.

The whole village is preparing for the Kuarup day. Ritual of Kalapalo tribe still lives on the shore of Upper Rio Xingu. They paint their body by red when there is an associated energy, health and agility. For adults painting is very important and has a specific meaning. Colors are red and black. First one stresses festive occasion while a second conflict. They extract red color from urucù berries, which are crushed and mixed with saliva. Each indigenous people have his own designs.

The village consists of oval-shaped houses arranged in a circle around a large clearing. Households are composed of two core nuclear families and bilateral kin of both in various combinations. They believe that if they dance during certain ceremonies, the animal spirits will protect the living. They type of ceremony depends on season, dry or the wet season. Each dance has a certain value that they believe in. Another belief is that they don’t eat land animals, only aquatic animals. They also believe that if they eat only aquatic animals, it will bring them moral beauty. Dreaming is claimed to be a means of communication with powerful beings who visit the sleeper, and they are drawn to the interactive self, when it detaches itself from a person's physical body, and begins to wander about. The appearance of powerful beings in their dreams allows the Kalapalo to acquire direct knowledge about them and about their properties, which can be subsequently used in regular life. Kalapalo often believe the dreaming subject is responsible for subsequent events. The interpretation of dreams is considered a metaphorical process of achieving knowledge about the interactive self.

Kalapalo

The Karajá Indians

Six large indian nations are to be found in Tocantins: the Karaja, the Apinajé, the Krahô, the Xerente, the Xambiao and the JavaeArea: Goiás, Mato Grosso, Pará and Tocantins, Brazil .The group’s territory is defined by an extensive stretch of the Araguaia river valley, including the world’s largest fluvial island, the Ilha do Bananal. Their 29 villages are located by preference close to the lakes and effluents of the Araguaia and Javaés rivers, as well as inland on the Ilha do Bananal. Population -2,500. Language Root: Macro-je, Javae, and Xambioa.

Each village establishes a specific territory for fishing, hunting and ritual practices, internally demarcating cultural spaces recognized by the whole group.Their customs still survive on the reservations. These belong to the non-classified linguistic group of the Marco-Je who are divided into the Karaja, the Javae and the Xambioa. They call themselves people of the Iny. The Araguaia Reservation is 4000 acres.

Karajá material culture includes house building techniques, cotton weaving, feather decorations, and artifacts made from straw, wood, minerals, shell, tree bark and pottery. Baskets are made by both men and women. Feather decorations are very elaborate and possess a direct relationship to rituals.

Theirs ancestors once dwelt in an underworld until one day one of them climbed up a hole in the ground surface of the earth, where his fellow tribesmen later followed and where they eventually settled.

In Karajá burials; the deceased is placed with his or her belongings in a mat at the bottom of a trench. The grave is covered with poles, reminiscent of a house, in front of which is placed a kind of small mast made from decorated timber. In the past a second burial was also performed which involved exhuming the corpse and placing the bones in a ceramic vase, especially prepared by the deceased's kin. This practice no longer takes place. The Karajá ritual structure is based around two major rituals: the male initiation rite (the Hetohoky), and the Aruanã Festival. These follow annual cycles based on the rise and fall of the Araguaia river level. The many smaller rites include collective fishing with timbó poison; the honey festival and the fish festival are known.

Karajá

The Rikbaktsa Indians

The Rikbaktsa – an indigenous community spread over 34 villages and 400,000 hectares in the state of Mato Grosso, northwest Brazil. The native language of the Rikbaktsa, called either Rikbaktsa or Erikbaktsa, is a Macro-Ge language similar to Kayapo,Bororo and Suya tribes. The present population is a little more than 900 individuals.The society is divided in exogamous Halves, one associated with the yellow macaw (Makwaratsa) and the other to the big-headed macaw – in reality, a variety of the red macaw – (Hazobtisa), each one of them subdivided into various clans, which in turn are associated with animals and plants.

The Rikbaktsa, who are also called "Orelhas de Pau" (Wooden Ears) and "Canoeiros" (Canoe People) have a reputation as being fearless warriors. They are known for the large wooden disks that they put in their ear lobes, hence their Portuguese name "Orelhas de Pau." One admirable characteristic of this tribe is their effort to maintain their culture by supporting indigenous educational programs, particularly those that have to do with community health and malaria prevention. They believe that all organisms were once human and that they were transformed into animals for good.

Sickness is seen as resulting from the breaking of taboos, from spells, or from poisoning by enemies. Rikbaktsa traditional medicine uses plant matter and ritual purification.Boys are given their "child" name at birth and changing later on.

They plant two kinds of maize, different types of yams, cassava, rice, beans, cotton, urucu (the fruit of the annatto tree), several varieties of bananas, sugarcane, peanuts and pumpkin. They also plant pineapple, citrus (limes, oranges, and tangerines), mangoes and other fruits. The Rikbaktsa eat almost every animal available to them; the few exceptions are alligators, anteaters, snakes, jaguars and the white-haired ape they “night monkey”. But they appreciate the meat of all other monkeys, which are their most frequent prey. Peccary is also highly valued, as well as agouti, deer, coatis, tapir (which they sometimes raise for food), various kinds of armadillos and fish. The women’s makes bracelets worn by girls and women.

The Rikbaktsa divide the beings of the universe in two series, opposed but also complementary to each other.There is believed that there is an exchange of “souls” among beings of the physical world. Thus the fate of the dead varies according to the lives they led as human beings. Some people may come back again as human beings or incarnated in “night” monkeys; others, who are believed to have been bad while alive, come back as dangerous animals, such as jaguars or poisonous snakes. On the other hand, all beings were once human, and the myths register how they were transformed into animals for good. Therefore, pigs, tapirs, macaws, birds and even the Moon were people once. Illnesses are seen as a break in the balance resulting from taboos that have been broken or as the product of a spell, or of poisoning by an enemy. Traditional cure methods are based on the use of plants with medicinal qualities and on ritual purifications.

Rikbaktsa

The Pataxó (Kamakã )Indians

The indigenous people today known basically by the name Pataxó Hãhãhãe, are made up of the; Baenã, Pataxó Hãhãhãe, Kamakã, Tupinambá, Kariri-Sapuyá and Gueren ethnic groups. The population inhabits the Caramuru-Paraguaçu Indigenous Reserve, 54,099 ha in size, in the south of Bahia, in the municipalities of Itajú do Colônia, Camacã and Pau-Brasil.The Pataxó language survived until at least 1938.Pataxó Hãhãhãe ethnonym are no longer in active use.

In the 1940s the three Indian groups that had gradually been compelled to abandon their ancestral lands had moved to the area occupied by the Pataxó Hahahai Indians in the basin of the Pardo and Colonia rivers in southeastern Bahia, Brazil. As a result of living together, these different groups have now become Pataxó Hahahai.

There is stating, that after the woman gave birth in the forest. The Women made cauim from manioc or maize. Between twelve and sixteen hours earlier they had chewed the maize seeds, spitting them into the pot for the festival. The men were painted with long black stripes and the women with circles formed from concentric half-moons and lines on their faces. Some decorated their heads with feather.

Diseases among the tribe were generally treated through shamanic practices using tobacco smoke. The deceased were mourned for days at a time: men and women stooped over the corpse and emitted “horrible cries” with short periods of rest, while the deceased sometimes remained lying on the ground for a long time before eventual burial. The entire body was painted with red and black lines that crisscrossed each other fairly haphazardly, after which the corpse was transported to the burial site and placed in the grave pit. They planted some bushes on top of the grave and some cotton and banana trees nearby if the site was not covered in too much shadow. These bananas were never eaten and the cotton never used (Douville apud Métraux 1930:272). The grave as a hole lined with posts and leaves in which they placed the corpse wrapped in tree bark, which served as a coffin. After its upper section was lined, the grave was filled with earth to the sound of “mournful cries”. They recorded pieces of fresh meat placed on a pile of palm leaves that covered the tomb. As soon as this food was eaten by an animal or disappeared for some other reason, they believed that the deceased had partaken of the food and they then avoided eating the meat of the offered animal for a long time . The deceased was mourned during the day and after the burial in the morning, at midday and in the afternoon as the sun began to set, over the period of one moon (Douville apud Métraux ibid:272).

The Kamakã Supreme Being is Queggiahorá. They believed in the immortality of the soul and that when the latter separated from the body it would not move away definitively until the corpse had rotted completely. The Sun is an evil genius that feeds on men, responsible too for introducing death to the world. When large swiddens were cleared, the Kamakã only burnt a small patch of forest each day. The smoke irritated the Sun and it turned red with anger when they set fire to the swidden. By burning the forest slowly they made less smoke and annoyed the Sun less (Douville apud Métraux 1930:270-271).

The moon, by contrast, is considered a benign divinity. It tells the Kamakã the best time to plant, during the new moon when the Moon rises in the west just as the sun is setting. The Moon also informs them about the start of the rainy season and storms and guides them during the celebration of festivals: every five years they spend a full year performing festivals during which marriages are celebrated (Douville apud Métraux 1930:271).

Pataxó Hãhãhãe

The Secoya

The Secoya (Sequoia) people (also known as Angotero, Encabellao) are an indigenous group living in the Ecuadorian Amazon and in Peru (population 678, Peru 144), self-description Ai do Pai. Secoya is a Tucanoan language. They are concentrated by the Rivers: Yubineto, Yaricaya, Angusilla and Santa Maria.Also live in Ecuador in the province of Napo, on the banks of the river Eno, Napo and Cuyabeno Aguarico.Traditionally, members of a patrilineage lived together in a multifamily house oval, where the eldest headed shamanic rituals.

Siona-Secoya religion is animistic; the natural order is explained without recourse to concepts of good and evil. They believe in a multitude of spirits that inhabit natural phenomena such as animals, trees, rivers, stars and multiple celestial realms. The culture hero is Baina.

The fundamental ritual of the Siona-Secoya is the yahé ceremony presided over by the shaman.The ceremony serves multiple purposes, including the diagnosis and treatment of illness. The ayahuasca ( Banisteriopsis caapi ) is the medium through which contact with the spirit world is made.

Some illnesses and birth defects are explained as the result of violating dietary or other taboos. Shamans diagnose and treat illness with rituals and plant medicines. Sucking and massage are employed to extract sorcerers' darts.

Most deaths are ascribed to sorcery. The dead person is wrapped in a hammock and buried under the house, which is then abandoned. The soul ( hoyo ) of the deceased travels to the sky world and lives among the "heavenly people" by a great celestial river. Sometimes souls occasionally return to earth and cause trouble.

Secoya shaman Ecuador ( Sequoia Peru)

The Kraho Indians

The Kraho, alternative names is Crao, Craho, Mehin, Krahô. The Kraho are located in four villages located in the in the central region of Brazil.

The contemporary Kraho live in the northeastern part of the state of Tocantins, in the Kraolândia Indigenous Reservation. The reservation covers 302,533 hectares situated in the municipalities of Goiatins and Itacajá. It is located between the Manoel Alves Grande and Manoel Alves Pequeno Rivers, two tributaries on the eastern side of the Tocantins River.

The Kraho call themselves Mehim. The name Nimuendajú applied to the northern groups- Quenpokrare. The Timbira language belongs to the Gê linguistic family. Timbira is the first language that Kraho children learn to speak.

The Kraho villages follow the ideal arrangement of houses, along a large circular path surrounding a central plaza. Inside their houses hang large woven baskets in which they carry and store food. All the nuclear families sheltered under the same roof constitute a domestic group, which is coordinated by the men’s father-in-law.

The Kraho also make mats woven of burity fiber, which line the platforms serving as beds made of the trunks of wild assai trees. When boys sleep in the central plaza, they use a simpler kind of mat.Daily gatherings of village men take place in the central plaza and are coordinated by two “mayors” who belong to the moiety, representing the season in progress.

When rituals are performed, each new set is situated in the north of the plaza, from where it will be gradually pushed toward the south as new sets are created. This pair which we can call age moieties, participate in various rituals, which in earlier times, included an initiation rite called Pembjê or Ikrere, no longer performed. The logs used in races are carefully fashioned, usually from burity trunks.

The Kraho have been known to use 57 different types of organic leaves/plant fibers for multiple different uses on the body-healing.

The Kraho have many rituals. Various rites related to the annual and initiation cycles have myths that explain their origins. Some myths recount the transformations triggered by the acts of the creator heroes Sun and Moon when the world was incomplete (including the appearance of human beings, menstruation, death, biting insects, and snakes). Others tell how Star-Woman obtained agricultural plants.

Shamanic believe; the earth is surrounded by water and covered by the sky, which rests on supports in the east, where there is a hole that leads to the underground world.

Kraho

The Mundurucu tribe

Also known as theMundurucu,Maytapu, andCara Preta, The Munduruku are a tribes, one of the most powerful tribes on the Amazon. They are located in different territories and regions in the states of Pará, dominated the region of the Valley of the Tapajós River.The Mundurucu are divided into twenty villages. They had an estimated population in 2009 of 10,896. They refer to themselves as thewuujuyû, or "our people". Unlike the Piraha. The Mundurucu have a numeracy system. Some communities are part of the Coata-Laranjal lans. Language is a part of the Tupi family. They only have number words up to five.

Traditional religiosity is very present among the Munduruku. They are distinguished in their basketry and weaving, which are male activities, and it is up to the men to make the Iço – a basket the women use to carry fruits and garden products. Shamanic beliefs and the seeking out of shamans from other ethnic groups remain alive. They claim that their isolated kin in the São Tomé region possess powerful shamans, who guide them during their journeys. Choosing a religion, a ritual, changing faith, creating sacred spaces, is a phenomenon which is important to the history of humanity: this has always happened and will continue to happen.

Mundurucu

The Canela Indians

The Canela Native Americans of Central Brazil live in grassy, open woodlands with stream-edge forests. Around 1,300 Canela live in just one large circular village in the center of Maranhão state,about 40 miles south of Barra do Corda and about 400 miles southeast of the mouth of the Amazon. The Canela speak Gê, a language.

The family that includes the Timbira people practicing ear piercing forms part of a series of rites, including for the khêêtúwayê andpepyê festivals. The ear piercing both symbolizes and enables the boy's maturation. The rites of passage for adolescents consist of ear-piercing for the boys and seclusion for the girls, at the time of their first menstruation. Canela say that boys with open ears are more receptive to the knowledge revealed to them by their elders. A boy's ears are opened when he is between ten and fifteen years old, but always before the completion of the pepyê festival.

An origin myth recounts that Sun and Moon walked over the land, creating the norms for social life. Sun established the norms favorable to life while Moon modified them to test its imperfections. Sun created ideal men and women while Moon created those with twisted hair, dark skin, and seen as deformed. Sun allowed machetes and axes to work by themselves in the gardens, while Moon made them stop. According to Canela tradition, the soul would go to a village of souls some place in the west, where it would live in a situation similar to life in a village.

Canela village- (middle)

The Araona Indians

The Araona currently live in a territorial area between the rivers Manupare and Manurimi-Bolivia.The Araona live in a settlement (Puerto Araona) located in the Department of La Paz, Province of Iturralde. One can observe four types of buildings.

Mythology: Baba Bizo and Baba Jote created the male and the female from pieces of branches that fell in a strong wind, converting the men first and the women last.Araona religion has many gods, in accordance with their material and existential needs. They consider all of life to be regulated by the action and presence of the divinities; both good and bad. Group of the Baba (gods) are considered as beings of evil and vengeance. Any strange natural phenomena resulting in damage are attributed to them, as well as all the trees and animals, malignant spirits or "jichis".Women are not allowed to participate in religious practices, nor can they participate in the ceremonies dedicated to them.

MAJOR GODSBaba bizo Good GodBaba Jote Creator GodBaba Sicuamala God of Time

MINOR GODSBaba Sicuasí God of the DeadBaba Dotsi God of the BirdsBaba Tsicuamama God of the Jungle Baba Huabo God of the AnimalsBaba Isahua God of the MarshesBaba Manu God of the Rivers

They have a sacred places and objects dedicated to the rituals that celebrate the Gods. The Babatae is a temple, where only the elders enter. There are also rites that are carried out in the jungle, at locations where the manifestation of a spirit has been seen. When a stranger arrives in the village, the men start to chew leaves, which they blow in the face of the visitor to remove the evil spirits.

The Cashibo Indians live in eastern Peru along the Aguaytía River and its tributaries, the San Alejandro and the Shambuyacu, and on the Sungaryacu, a tributary of the Pachitea. There are three subgroups, the Kakataibo, the Cashiñon, and the Ruño, who speak slightly different dialects. The Cashibo language belongs to the Panoan Family. Traditionally, a Cashibo community consisted of one or several families living under one roof.

Cashibo

The Huaorani Indians

The Eastern part of Ecuador stretches el Oriente, the jungle, between the Napo and Curaray Rivers. The Huaorani are also known as Waorani, or Aucas. The Huaorani are known for their spears, which are long, with both ends sharpened. This traditional weapon used by them is thetapa, a lance two meters long, with one end shaped like a harpoon and the other forming a sharp point.

Usually more than one family lives in a house, and typically, a couple lives with their children and the parents of the husband. Along the walls there are hammocks woven by the female occupants of the house. They are a semi-nomadic horticultural society.

One of the biggest challenges the Huaorani face are the oil companies,las petroleras. Their territory is very rich in oil. The Ecuador being the fifth largest oil exporter in South America. The oil companies built theVia Auca, a 150 km road slashing through the heart of Huaorani territory.

The Huaorani believe that when someone dies, the soul starts a journey towards heaven. On the way, in the middle of the path, a big anaconda is obstructing the way. Only brave souls can jump the boa and reach heaven. Whoever fails, returns to earth as a termite, and leads a miserable existence.The Waodani believe the animals of their forest have a spiritual as well as physical existence. Death is no more than a transition in life, and is not cause for worry.The song of the hilucu is heard "As my ancestor lived, so also I will live.As my ancestors died, so also I will die."

Huaorani

The Cocama Indians

Most of the 15,000 to
18,000 Cocama (Kokama) live in
Peru, in the Lagunas and Ucayali River-of
the Marañón, Pastaza, Nucuray, and Urituyacu rivers. A 20 Cocama live in Colombia. and 411 in Brazil. The Cocama language belongs to the
Tupí-Guaraní Family.

They
build their houses on poles, or stilts, to protect themselves, their houses,
and their possessions. They also make their roofs from palm leaves found in the
forest, which they intricately weave into thatch for the roofs.

Cocama believed to be a reincarnation of one
of their chiefs. They still practice shamanism and hold too many of their own
religious beliefs. They are famous for their pottery, which has linear and
rectilinear designs of red, white, and black.

At one year of age, Cocama
children took part in a ritual called usciumata that involved
the cutting of their hair by a chief. At puberty, a girl was secluded in a
hammock for one month. Following this
initiation, she was sexually free until she married. The Cocama practiced secondary
burial; after the bones had been buried for one year, they were then placed in
a jar.

Cocama believed that malformed children and twins were the work of evil
supernatural forces; malformed children were killed, and one of a pair of twins
was set adrift in the river with the belief that a shaman might rescue and rear
him or her. The
New Earth is in the Amazon jungle, where is the energy of nature and divine
energy. The energy of the universe is designed and directed by the look of
a large eye on different parts of the Earth. This eye gaze changes its times. Before
the gaze is directed to the Center of the jungle and now makes it north. Different
symptoms are evidence of this: phenomena and energies of nature, good
productivity and abundance of land, growing fruit and potential, concentration
of positive spiritual forces manifested in Nature itself, and quiet and
peaceful, suitable for the spiritual fulfillment and shamanism.

Cocama

Indians of the Peruvian Amazon use this plant Maricahua as a hallucinogen and admixture in
Ayahuasca preparations. Two branches or three leaves are boiled for over
ten hours with ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis
caapi).

TheAkuntsu

The last six
survivors of the people known to outsiders as the ‘Akuntsu’ live in two small
malocas set close to one another in the forests of the Omerê river, an affluent
of the left bank of the Corumbiara in the southeast of Rondônia state.The
Akuntsu, in turn, call the Kanoê ‘Emãpriá.’ Today the Akuntsu comprise
one of the smallest ethnic groups in Brazil.

They were first contacted in only 1995,
when they numbered seven people. As of 2006 their population was down
to six. The tribe consists of chief Kunibu Baba (male, age: ~ 70), Pupak (male,
age: ~ 40), Ururu (female, age:~80) and three women with ages from 23-35. The
seventh member of the tribe died in 1995. The only child born after that died
in 2000 in a storm. With his death the only hope of the tribe avoiding
extinction faded. In October 2009 Ururu died. Another isolated tribe known
as Kanoê of Omere lives near their village. Both tribes were severely decimated
during waves of massacres by cattle ranchers and their gunmen during the 1970s
and '80s. Sessions are an ever-present aspect of
the ritual life of the Akuntsu. The
group’s leader and shaman, interacts with the female shaman in lengthy
encounters that involve the characteristic shamanic blowing and inhaling of
angico powder (snuff). They enter into trance and evoke the spirits of animals
and fantastic beings, which they seem to incorporate.

The Arara ('Macaw'
People) are an Amerindian tribe The Arara people, also called Arara
do Pará, located in the Amazonian region of Brazil in South America. The
Arara are hunters and gatherers and speak a Carib language. Occupying the
watershed region between west of the Xingu, east of the Tapajós and south of
the lower Amazon since the middle of the 19th century. The most distant
subgroup - still relatively isolated from the rest - is the one contacted in
1987, living in a village near to the Cachoeira Seca creek, on the upper Iriri
river, in the Cachoeira Seca IT. This group comprises 56 individuals, all
descendants of a single woman (who was still alive in 1994).

vArara Indians in Brazilian Amazonia are
fighting for their survival. The Arara (Ã«macaw people'), call themselves
Ukarangma. They are avid hunters and fishers and grow cassava, sweet potato,
corn, bananas and pineapple in communal gardens. They areagainst
waves of armed loggers, ranchers and colonists. The
Arara have been granted two reserves by the Brazilian government, they include
two stripes of land near the lower Iriri River. Unfortunately, the reserves
have not been official legalized due to a lack of government funding. Because
of this, the reserves are not properly marked or patrolled. This leaves the
Arara open for several types of attacks. The Arara have had ongoing clashes
with their Amerindian neighbors, particularly the Kayapo and the Juruna. The
Arara again continue to struggle against these new enemies for their survival.

For feasts and rituals, the Arara paint themselves in
stunning, bold designs using a black dye called genipapo.

Voice of SurvivalÃ« We were born in the
forest – it's our only home. We only hunt. That's what we do. If our land is
swallowed up, where will we go tohunt? Our land is now
an island and we are surrounded. We are veryworried that the
intruders will invade more. Almost everywhere
severe land invasions are occurring which, threaten the Indians' future.

From
the point of view of the symbolism associated with the economic rhythms, meat
and drink make up an integral part of a system whose main axis the native
doctrine is concerning the circulation of a vital substance called ekuru.
Passing from the blood of killed animals to the earth, and from here to the
liquids that nourish and stimulate the growth of plants, this vital substance
is the main object of desire - not only of human beings, but also all the
beings who inhabit the world: in effect, the object of a generalized predation
in the world. Humans seek to acquire the vital substance ekuru through
the death of animals during the hunt and the transformation of plants into a
fermented drink called piktu - a primordial source for
acquiring these vital substances for humans.

The capacity of the earth to reprocess vital substances, transforming
them into plant nutrients with which humans make drinks, also informs Arara
funeral practices. In general, the Arara do not bury their dead, but reserve a
platform in the forest for them, inside a small funeral house built especially
for each occasion. Raised above the earth, the deceased must gradually dry out,
losing whatever remained of the body's vital substances to the set of
metaphysical beings which lurk around corpses, feeding themselves on the
elements which previously gave life to the deceased. The Arara funeral is thus
a kind of devolution of the vital substances that the humans extracted from the
world; an eschatological exchange or reciprocity with the world's other beings.

Arara

The Enawene Indians

The Enawene Nawe
people live in the basin of the Juruena River in the southern Amazon rainforest-
western Brazil. They are a relatively isolated Indigenous people in Mato
Grosso state. They perform the Yaokwa (Yãkwa) ritual
every year during the drought period to honor the Yakairiti spirits, thereby
ensuring cosmic and social order for the different clans. Yaokwa, the Enawene
Nawe people’s ritual for the maintenance of social and cosmic order, is integrated
into their everyday activities over the course of seven months during which the
clans alternate responsibilities: one group embarks on fishing expeditions
throughout the area while another prepares offerings of rock salt, fish and
ritual food for the spirits, and performs music and dance. The Enawene Nawe are
also well known for the fact that they do not hunt or consume any red meat. Honey
gathering is celebrated in Keteoko.

Fish is an essential part of their diet
and plays a vital part in their rituals such as Yãkwa, a four-month exchange of
food between humans and spirits.They are famed for their fishing
techniques. During the fishing season, the men build dams across rivers and
spend several months camped in the forest, catching and smoking the fish.

They are divided into clans and live in a dozen large malocas,
or communal houses, made of wood and thatch. These are built in a circle
extending from ‘the house of the sacred flutes’ in the centre.

Maintaining balance and harmony with nature and the spirit world is
essential. The Enawene Nawe universe has two levels and they live between the
two. The upper level is the home of the enore nawe, or celestial spirits, who
are the owners of honey and certain flying insects. On a fishing trips and expeditions
they gather forest produce. The subterranean level is the realm of the yakairiti,
or spirits of the underworld.

Enawene

The Fulni-o tribe

Here are some members of the Fulni-o tribe of the North East of Brazil. They live in a town called Aguas Belas in the state of Pernambuco. This is drought stricken along with a larger portion of the North East. They are now number about 6,000 and have lived on their current "reserve" of land for more than 500 years. Their name, Fulnio, means "people of the river and stones.

The Fulnio,
despite these many and complex pressures and challenges, have held on to their
spiritual and healing practices. Every year for three months they go on
spiritual retreat, in order to renew their ties to their traditional ways. "Jaguar,"
(also known as Aristides or Thafkexkyaxkya), leader of a group of Fulnio,
visionary and a long-time activist for Brazilian indigenous people. The
Fulni-Ô tribe is the only tribe in the northeast of Brazil in the state of
Pernambuco that has maintained their own language (called Yathe´) and their own
culture. This is because of their strong spiritual practice, which is kept
alive through their dedication to anage-old
three-month ceremony called Ouricuri. This ceremony is strictly for Fulni-Ô
Indians. Men and women are separated during this time. The Fulni-Ô have
an extraordinary knowledge of plant and animal relationships, including healing
benefits. In fact, other tribes call them to heal their sick. Their music,
songs, dances and art reflect this harmony between life and spirit. They are
saying:

"We are the tribe Fulni-Ô, the last
descendents of the Tapwya tribe. Most of our people have been wiped out. We
have a great difficulty because we don’t have any forest or water left, and we
depend on the forest to perform our rituals that preserve our ways."
"Today, we still have the power of the sun, the air, and the earth in the
palms of our hands. We have not lost the power of our ancestors. We want
support to get water and our rain forest back. We are one body only, the
rainforest, the water and the Indians. Six million of us (BRAZILIAN INDIGENOUS
PEOPLE, NOT JUST FULNI-O) have been wiped out. If we do not receive help,
our people will perish."

Fulni-Ô

The Gavião tribe

Gavião live in the
Mãe Maria Indigenous Territory, located in the municipality of Bom Jesus do
Tocantins in the south-east of Pará State. In 1985, the Gavião population
numbered 176 people.

Gavião rituals are
directly occupied with the relations between persons and groups through the use
of a symbolic schema: the division into moieties. The entire group is segmented
according to ceremonial moieties, Pàn (Macaw) and Hàk (Hawk), who dispute the
traditional log races and archery contests.

Some rituals last several months, with opening and
closing periods. In 1983, the Gavião held an important ritual cycle, linked to
male initiation: the Pemp, which had been unperformed for many years. The
Gavião speak a dialect of the Eastern Timbira language, belonging to the Gê
family.

Gavião

The Kaingang tribe

Kaingang Native American ethnic groupspread out over the four
southern Brazilian states of Sao Paulo, Parana, Santa Catarina and
Rio Grande do Sul. They are also called Caingang and Aweikoma.The
Kaingang (Self-designation:Kanhgág; Kaingang.) live on more than
30 Indigenous lands which represent a small part of their traditional
territories. It is estimated that the Kaingang population today is 25,875 people.

The holding of the Kikikoi ritual
depends on a request from the kin of someone who has died during the previous
year or in previous years. The Kaingang, like other groups of the Macro-Jê
language family, are characterized as socio-centric societies that recognize
dualistic socio-cosmological principles, presenting a system of moieties.Among
the Kaingang the moieties which gave rise to society are called Kamé and Kairu.

In the origin
myth gathered by Telêmaco Borba (1882) one finds a summarized version of
Kaingang dualist cosmology. In this myth, the culture heroes Kamé and Kairu produce
not only the divisions among men, but also the division among the beings of
nature. The Sun is Kamé and the Moon Kairu,
the pine tree is Kamé and the cedar Kairu, the
lizard is Kamé and the monkey Kairu and so on.
According to the Kaingang tradition, marriages must be made between
individuals of opposite moieties; the Kamé have to marry with
the Kairu and vice-versa. “The
child owes its existence exclusively to the father-patrilineal descent.The
very criterion of ethnic identity is shaped by the concept of paternal descent.
Kaingang
groups even today share, besides a common mythological record, beliefs and
practices related to ritual experiences – the deep respect for the dead and the
attachment to the lands where their umbilical cords are buried. The
mythological brothers Kamé and Kairu not only
created the beings of nature, but also the rules of conduct by which men should
live, defining the formula for moiety recruitment (patrilineality) and
establishing the way the moieties should be elated (exogamy).

The
center of ritual life among the Kaingang is occupied by the ritual of the cult
to the dead.The Kiki,
or the ritual of the Kikikoi (to eat the Kiki), as
the Kaingang cult to the dead is known, has already been described as the
center of the religious life of these Indians. Although, this ritual today is
celebrated by only a small group, on the Xapecó Indigenous land, all the
Kaingang associate the Kiki with the indigenous ‘tradition’,
to the ‘system of the ancients’. The ritual consists, fundamentally, of
the performance by two groups formed by individuals belonging to each one of
the clan moieties, Kamé and Kairu. The ritual process is marked by the meeting
of the chanters around three lit fires, on different days, on the terrain of
the organizer – a place known as the ‘dance plaza’ or the ‘plaza of the fires’.
The chanters remain throughout the night around the fires, accompanied by other
members of the respective moieties, chanting and praying.

The kuiã
(shamans), effectively are known also with knowledge, or the capacity to “see
and know what’s what”.As
one older kuiã stated, everything that
exists in nature is a remedy. The fundamental condition for considering
plants to be ‘forest remedies’ is their location in the virgin forest – the
‘remedies of the forest’ cannot be cultivated, being in the forest is the
condition for the plant’s maintaining its force and the remedy produced, its
efficacy.

The
principal weapons of war consisted of bows (uy), arrows (dou) and
spears (urugurú). The arrow points were made from monkey and bugio bone.

It is
known, that modernization,assimilation and experimentation of the society or tribe, brings disadvantages
in many forms, we can see it in our history. Kaingang
social and political organization will be developed based on the presentation
of what we conventionally call the “traditional model” and the “present-day
model” if we like or not, and I think that this is a scary model, to even think about it. What do you think?

Kaingang

The Kuikuro Indians

The Kuikuro form part of what is called
the upper Xingu Carib sub-system. This is nowadays made up of four groups: the
Matipu, Nahukwá and Kalapalo, as well as the Kuikuro. The Kuikuro currently
inhabit three villages. The most important and largest of these is Ipatse which
has more than 300 people and is set slightly back from the left bank of the
middle Culuene. Kuikuro houses, like all those of the upper Xingu, are large,
oval-shaped longhouses (malocas).

Everything
that exists and merits explanation is associated with one or more narratives. Giti (Sun)
is the cultural hero par excellence, the creator, along with his twin brother Aulukuma (Moon).
The creator gods however include a series of ancestors of the Sun and Moon,
descendents of the marriage between Atsiji (Bat) and Uhaku (a
tree).

The Kuikuro have
a sophisticated understanding of the stars and constellations and project
mythical characters and event onto the heavens. Observation of the heliacal
rising of certain stars regulates productive activities and rituals. There is a
heavenly world (kahü) whose ‘lord’ is a
two-headed vulture and where the dead and the itseke live in
villages. The akunga (‘shadow’, ‘soul’) of the dead person is
released from the body, wanders for a certain time amongst the living and later
sets off on a long journey of encounters and battles with birds and monsters
who sometimes manage to completely destroy the akunga. The dead have
different destinies depending on the
type of death they died.

Kuikuro

The Aymara people

The Aymara is one of the major nations of South America, spoken by more than two million people in the Andean region. The native language of the Aymara is Aymara.

Inhabited: Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Chile The most common domestic unit is the patrilocal extended family. The patrilineal emphasis in Aymara kinship relations seems to be undergoing a change to bilateralism. Aymara of the (high Andean plateau) around Lake Titicaca in southern Peru is almost pathologically inflexible and fatalistic. The history of the Aymara has been characterized by shifting pressures from dominant groups. Aymara social organization is highly variable and has been adapted to local and temporal economic and political forces. Prior to their conquest by the Inca around 1430, the Aymara are thought to have been organized into a series of independent states or sub-tribes. The majority of Aymara are dependent on agriculture for at least part of their subsistence. A variety of crops is grown, the most important being potatoes, quinoa, and barley. Sheep, llamas, cattle, and alpacas being are part of daily life and the main domestic animals. Aymara supernatural beliefs and practices are a blend of aboriginal (Aymara and Quechuan) traits with elements derived from history. Aboriginal traits include beliefs in a number of nature spirits.Magicians, who are "being called by God," serve as mediators with the supernatural realm by performing magical rituals as weather magic, and fertility rituals. They may also take part in curing when the disease is diagnosed as having a supernatural aspect. They also perform sorcery. The Aymara believe in the power of spirits that live in mountains, and in the sky. The strongest and most sacred of their deities is Pachamama, the Earth Goddess. Aymara make offerings to Mother Earth, in order to assure a good harvest or cure illnesses.

Aymara

The Quechuas Indian

The Quechuas (also Runakuna, Kichwas,
and Ingas) is the collective term for several indigenous ethnic
groups in South America, who speak a Quechua language.

Inhabited: Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador, with a
population around 2.5 million. The Quichua groups of South American Indians are
the largest of any American Indian group in the World today.

Indians of the
central Andes are the direct descendants of the Incas.Quechua religion
combines both pre-Columbian and Catholic elements.This religious Andean
world is populated by gods who have human attributes.They belief is,
that supernatural forces govern everyday events, such as weather and illness.They live in adobe houses with no
windows. At night they close the one door but in the daytime it is left open to
provide ventilation. Near the main house is a lean-to another smaller house
used for the cooking and eating.

Quechua

Amazon region is the world’s biggest tropical rainforest - as well as
the world’s largest river basin.Throughout the tropics, rainforests are
being cut down, by the different methods and
for different reasons, people in tropical regions of the world are cutting
down, burning, or otherwise damaging the forests. The process in which a forest
is cut down, burned or damaged is called "deforestation."

You'll probably have heard some shocking facts
about how much of the Amazon forest is being cut down - the latest figures saythree football pitches
disappearing per minute.

The Amazon forest, especially in Brazil, is destroyed because of land
clearing for pasture land by commercial and speculative interests. The Amazon is also destroyed for cattle ranching and due to the actions of poor cultivation.

Large-scale expansion of agriculture at the expense of the
forest could entail the loss of almost two-thirds of the Amazon's terrestrial
biomass by later this century, with grave consequences for the climate and
agricultural production, according to an analysis by Brazilian and U.S.
scientists.

For many years, the Brazilian rain
forest is one of the most biodiverse areas on the planet Earth.Brazil's Senate has approved a
controversial forestry bill that environmentalists say will deal a "mortal
blow" to the already threatened Amazon region and open the door to even
greater deforestation. "Because these roads cut deep into the rain forest
and then spread outwards, there's a much greater loss of habitat and species
than if there was a single area of deforestation.

During the past
40-50 years, close to 20 percent of the Amazon rain forest has been cut down, I
learned—more than in all the previous 450 years since European colonization
began. The percentage could well be far higher.All of it starts with a roads.There are more than 105,000
miles (170,000 kilometers) of these roads, most made illegally by loggers
to reach mahogany and other hardwoods for the lucrative export market. The land
sharks follow the roads deep into previously impenetrable forest.

Every year the
Amazon River rises more than 9m and floods surrounding forests. The rising
waters enrich the soils with nutrients and regenerate lakes, floating meadow,
and other seasonal habitats. Brazil lost nearly 150,000 sq. kilometers of forest—and
since 1970, over 600,000 sq. kilometers (232,000 square miles) of Amazon
rainforest have been destroyed.

Local communities, including some of the poorest
people on Earth, depend on the natural riches of the forest, but the lower
Amazon floodplains are under increasing pressure.

A cattle ranching is expanding. Local farmers
find it hard to make a living. Commercial fishing has intensified. Local people
increasingly rely on fishing to survive - but they’re suffering the
consequences of overfishing and loss of fish habitats.For years, many
environmentalists have expressed great concern about the fate of the rainforest.

The cause of
deforestation is a very complex subject. A competitive global economy forces
the poorer tropical countries the need to raise money. At the national level,
the governments of these countries sell logging concessions to raise money for
projects, to pay international debt, or to develop industry.

On the end, the loss of forests has a great
effect on the global carbon cycle.The
loss of species will have a great impact on the planet. The deforestation of
tropical rain forests is a threat to life worldwide. Deforestation may have
profound effects on global climate and cause the extinction of thousands of
species annually. Stopping deforestation in the tropics has become an
international movement.

There are increasing signs that the
strain placed on the Amazon's eco-system could lead to an irreversible
breakdown. There is prediction that the combination of drought, logging and
fire could wipe out the Amazon by 2030, with disastrous consequences for the
world.

.........................................

Two
different people have had different opinion emotional and behavioral responses
to the same experience of living in a city, whatever is, cutting down forest or
daily chore of driving a car. Some people have always paled with sympathy or
cruelty, wept in joy and sorrow, laughed out of pleasure, blushed with
embarrassment or have a hard time to watch what is happening all over worlds.
Such extreme impact of external developments and its impact on people are the
living and strain of modern society. Really that much worse than they were in
the good old days—or do they just seem that way?

Looking
back in history’s rearview mirror, the old days were not so bad. A farmer and
his family had certain fundamental positive value—most notably, perhaps, a
sense of identity with the earth and with one another, and sense of control
over his destiny.
The agrarian society has undergone drastic changes, almost unbelievable changes
which are impacted our lives directly or indirectly. About three quarter of
people now live in cities or suburbs, not on farms. The shift from the old
rural to the modern urban life has made existence better in some respects,
harder in others.

Almost everywhere there is noise—the neighbor radio
blaring, sirens and horns are becoming stressful. And there is ugliness,
compared to the spare simplicity of forest. When the forest or farm landscape become really a sight for the sore,
smog- burned eyes that we have to gaze upon it, increasingly, all over the
world, this shape seems to consist of the same hopeless jungle of junk, or man
–made wasteland . The first to deplore the deteriorating quality of the
rainforest, where toll it takes on its inhabitants which we already named the
Industrial Revolution (I.R) As the I.R. spread around the globe, so did
complaints about urban life called also “City nervousness.” This civilization
is driving men just as surely, placing people under constant strain, mostly unconscious
is debilitating as most vigorous physical exertions. From studies it is clear
that animals, at least, suffer when crowded. But what about man? Statistics
from many cities do show that disproportionately high rates of crime, drug
abuse and mental illness occur when human beings are packed together. Does the
city create afflicted, antisocial people, or does it attract and provide a
haven for them?

I think that how people perceive crowding
varies from person to person, man to woman, nation to nation and specific
situation to situation. The extent to which the stresses of urban life depend
on the individual’s sense of control, or
lack of it. The stress of crowding is not so much a matter of density as of a
loss of control.

On a day-to
day basis, many inhabitants of cities have attempted to adjust to his own
overload the only way they know how. To some, crowding is an attraction in itself. What attracts people most in a city
is a job and other people. People are
attracted to the density they say they don't like. “There is a broken heart for
every light or corner street.” To live
life in the city we gladly take on the pressures of noise, crowding, insecurity
and loneliness for a better life, trying to adapt to the negative stresses and
enjoy the positive ones.

The
atmosphere, one of such rapid change, and constant argument that everyone
seemed to teeter on the verge of nervous exhaustion is here, between us. We are
not used to a complicated civilization, because we have changed our environment
more quickly than we know how to change ourselves.

Life in the modern city had become a symbol of
the fact that man can become adapted to treeless avenues, starless skies and
tasteless engineered food and spiritless pleasures, where behind of every car
lurks a Stone Age man. Sometimes he
laughs but mostly he cries, but a lot of time he just sits and watching our
concrete jungle, thinking where we are going again.

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